


Girl, Ease My Mind

by story_monger



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/F, Growing Up, Lesbian Character, M/M, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Romance, Secret Relationship, Team as Family, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-09 08:44:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11665617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: Pidge likes girls.She's known this for a few years now. And maybe she was starting to ramp up into actually dating girls instead of crushing on them from afar, except then came Kerberos, then came losing Matt and Dad, then came forging her identity, finding a giant mechanical lion, and being flung into a universe-wide war.Most teens aren't paladins of Voltron while they're trying to figure out their dating lives, but Pidge is willing to give it a shot.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for the [Voltron General Big Bang](http://voltronbang.tumblr.com/); thank you so much to the mods over there for all their work. 
> 
> Many thanks too to my artist, [rowantreeisme](http://rowantreeart.tumblr.com/), who created the beautiful art for this story. Go check out the [art masterpost](http://rowantreeart.tumblr.com/post/163688068319/my-art-pieces-for-the-voltronbang-i-was)!
> 
> Also thanks to [nicknackel](http://nicknackel.tumblr.com/) for their beta work!

 

> "'Cause all girls feel too big sometimes, regardless of their size."
> 
> -Kimya Dawson
> 
> "I Like Giants"

 

“Your turn, Pidge.”

“Hit me.”

“Um.”

Pidge waited as Keith scanned the crowded tables surrounding them. The haphazard setup closely resembled the flea markets back home, and the sheer variety of random junk was similar too. Pidge appreciated that some things just didn’t change across galaxies. “That,” Keith said, pointing at a maroon sphere sitting near Pidge’s hip. “Guess what that is.”

“Right,” Pidge, said picking up the sphere. She held it up to the light and twisted it back and forth, watching as the light filtering through the flea market’s sheer cloth ceiling played off the ceramic-looking surface. The sphere was about the size of two Pidge-sized fists and as heavy as her favorite wrench back on the ship, the one that always kept a good grip. Pidge had no idea what material the sphere was made of, but it felt slightly gritty when she ran her fingers over it. Pidge searched for any hidden panels or buttons, but the sphere offered nothing. She did think, however, that it was warm against her palms.

“Well?” Keith asked.

“Thinking.” Pidge held the sphere up to her ear in the vague hope that she’d hear quiet ticking, but it was utterly silent. “Uh.” She pulled the sphere from her ear, gave it one last thorough look over then said, “It’s a decorative piece.”

“You said that for your last turn,” Shiro pointed out. He was standing a little down the narrow aisle, two large bags hanging from his metal arm.

“And I was right last time, wasn’t I?” Pidge said. She turned. “Coran? Verdict?”

“Mm?” Coran straightened from where he’d been examining something that looked like an old alarm clock, had the designer never actually seen an alarm clock and had instead depended on vague descriptions. Coran’s eyes fell to the maroon sphere, and his eyes lit up. “Ah, a malka egg.”

“An egg?” Pidge demanded, thrusting the sphere away from her body.

“What’s a malka?” Keith asked.

“A fascinating little creature from the Thei system,” Coran said. “They only lay one egg every few rotations, and those eggs are incredibly hardy. You could throw one from the top of a building or toss it into space, and the fetus would be perfectly safe. They wait until the ideal conditions to hatch; sometimes it takes them decafebes.”

“So why is it in a flea market?” Shiro asked. He’d approached Pidge’s side, peering down at the egg with fresh interest.

“The same reason anything is in a…what was that? Flea market?” Coran shrugged. “Someone probably couldn’t get it to hatch and got rid of it.”

“That’s a jerk move,” Pidge said, letting the egg drift closer to her body again.

“The malka fetus will be perfectly fine,” Coran assured her. “Like I said, they’re built to lay dormant for a long time. Eventually, it will find itself in the right conditions to hatch.”

“So it’s an orphan,” Pidge said, glancing sidelong at Shiro.

“No,” Shiro said flatly.

“It’s not even a pet,” Pidge protested. “It’s an _egg_.”

“And eggs hatch,” Shiro replied. He looked to Coran. “Are malka dangerous?” he asked.

“Hardly. The worst they can do is nibble at some exposed wiring.”

“Oh come on, Shiro, that’s no worse than the average puppy,” Pidge said. “Please? I want to see if I can hatch it. We travel a lot, right? So it’ll get lots of different options to try out.”

Shiro hesitated, which was all Pidge needed. She looked to Keith for support, eyes wide. Keith eyed the egg, eyed her, then turned to Shiro. “It could be a team building exercise in nurturing something,” he said. Pidge nodded and did her best to look solemn and responsible and paladin-y.

Shiro’s eyes narrowed, but Pidge continued to gaze at him with a steady, wide expression. She could tell Keith was doing the same thing because Shiro’s eyes were flicking between the pair of them with an increasing expression of exasperation. Finally, he turned to Coran, who was acting like he wasn’t finding the whole thing hilarious and failing completely. It was the ears; Pidge had learned to read a lot from the Alteans’ ears.

“How much am I going to regret this?” Shiro asked him, voice resigned.

“Not all that much,” Coran said cheerfully. “Malka are charming little things. And Keith has a point; there’s definite psychological benefits to caring for something while you’re stuck on a ship.”

“Right,” Pidge piped up. “It’ll be like astronauts taking care of plants during their missions.”

“Fine, yes, get it,” Shiro said, rolling his eyes. “But if it hatches and becomes trouble, we’re dropping it off somewhere.” He turned away, shaking his head, but Pidge thought his exasperation had an edge of fondness.

“I owe you one,” Pidge muttered to Keith.

“I know,” Keith said. “I need your help making some adjustments to the robo gladiator. I’m trying to add more fighting styles to its library, and Coran insists it’s really easy, but I keep hitting error messages.”

Pidge’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“Guess not,” Keith said. “So will you help me?”

“’Course,” Pidge said, tucking the egg against her waist. “I know who my friends are.” She grinned over at Keith, who blinked briefly before grinning back. Keith did that sometimes, pause when people used the word ‘friend’ or ‘family’ in relation to him. It was kind of sweet when it wasn’t incredibly sad.

“You lost your round, by the way,” Shiro called back from ahead of them.

“Shit, you’re right,” Pidge said.

“What’s the score?” Keith asked.

“Me and Pidge are tied,” Shiro replied. “And you’re still two points behind us.”

“How does one win this game?” Coran asked curiously.

“Just correctly guess the purpose of the most things before we have to go,” Shiro said.

“And if I say that I’m ready to go back to the ship?” Coran asked.

“Damn. This means me and Shiro need a rematch.” Pidge scowled.

“I’ll remind you next time we go shopping,” Shiro said gamely. He glanced around. “Has anyone seen Hunk or Lance recently?”

“They were looking at music stuff,” Pidge said. “I can go get them.”

“Thanks.”

Pidge hurried down the narrow aisle, the egg still tucked into her side. The flea market was a sprawling, crowded place, and she had to duck and weave a few times to avoid getting hit in the face with stray elbows or tentacles or horns. She found the music section easily enough, but there was no sign of either Lance or Hunk.

“Geeze, come on guys,” Pidge muttered, pulling out her phone. It had taken a lot of work and input from Coran, but Pidge had managed to rehaul her, Lance’s, and Hunk’s phones to do some basic tasks. Nothing too fancy, but in a controlled space, each phone could track the locations of the others. Not nearly as sophisticated as the suits’ systems, but enough for situations like this one…so long as either Hunk or Lance had thought to bring their phones with them.

“Yes!” Pidge pumped her fist when the widget representing Hunk pulsed on her screen. Good old reliable Hunk. He wasn’t too far away, so Pidge oriented herself and started walking in his direction.

After a few minutes, though, Pidge was frowning again. The widget told her she was almost on top of Hunk, but there was no sign of him. And, okay, to be fair, the location on these things always had an element of error, but there was absolutely no sign of him. Maybe Hunk had dropped his phone. Though he was usually careful about those things. No, wait. Maybe he and Lance had been attacked and _that_ had made Hunk drop his phone.

“Shit,” Pidge muttered, gripping her phone so hard its edges dug into her palm.

“Agitation isn’t very conducive to convincing a malka to hatch, darling,” said a female-sounding voice. Pidge turned to find a stall keeper watching her. She blinked.

Most of the aliens in this city were from a species Coran called Ika who, in Pidge’s opinion, resembled archaeopteryx with little hands and long legs. But there were other species scattered throughout, and the stall keeper before her was of a species Pidge had never seen before.

She looked downright humanoid: two arms and legs, two eyes and one nose. Above wide cheekbones were deep-set, upturned eyes that looked black until they caught the light, and Pidge realized they were dark, dark blue. She didn’t have hair, just a smooth scalp, but its absence only accentuated the elegance of her neck and the breadth of her shoulders. Fine, almost translucent filaments grew from her jawline. They twitched slightly as Pidge watched. The alien had seven fingers draped casually across the tabletop. The fingers were impossibly long and spindly, and Pidge thought that they would surely shatter with the slightest pressure.

The most arresting part of the alien, though, was her skin. It was a softly churning palette of colors. After several seconds, Pidge realized that they shifted in time with the stall keeper’s inhales and exhales. It was mesmerizing to watch; Pidge didn’t know that she had names for all the colors she saw.

She was beautiful. This stall keeper was utterly beautiful, and Pidge had no idea how to react except to stand there and gawk and try to remember what the question had been.

The stall keeper tilted her head. “What’s gotten you so agitated, then?”

Oh, right.

“I—nothing.” Pidge closed her mouth and licked her lips. “I mean…I’m looking for some friends. They should be around here.”

“What did they look like, darling?”

Pidge started. Her heart was ramming against her ribcage and this was _stupid_ and why was she _like_ this?

“They resemble me,” Pidge said. “But bigger. And their skin and hair are darker. But a lot like me in, you know. Overall body plan.”

A streak of lilac crossed the stall keeper’s face, and Pidge found herself staring distractedly. “I saw them,” the stall keeper said. “They passed a few dobashes ago.”

“Oh, good,” Pidge said in an exhale.

“I’d check behind the displays,” the stall keeper continued, and this time something in her tone was wry.

Pidge nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, darling.” The stall keeper inclined her head. “Good luck with that malka egg. They can be tricky.”

Pidge watched a fan of deep, deep black splay across the stall keeper’s shoulder. “Thanks,” she blurted again. She wanted to do something absurd, like ask for her name, or ask where she was from. It was stupid, really, because they never shopped at the same place twice. But maybe this shop keeper traveled.

Pidge didn’t ask any of that. She nodded tersely, gripped her malka egg, and moved along the aisle. Within three steps, she was wincing. Within nine steps, she wanted to bury her face in her hands and scream. Stupid. _Stupid_. The shop keeper was probably decades older. And she was an alien. God, come on Pidge, she was an _alien_.

Pidge wearily glanced down at her phone again and watched as her map seemed to freeze and flicker before clearing up again. Pidge realized her and Hunk’s widgets appearing flush side by side. She looked around and saw that a long curtain had been hung behind the tables, probably to provide a storage area. Pidge crawled under the table and pushed her way through the curtain. The first thing she saw was two pairs of familiar sneakers.

“Thank god,” Pidge said irritably, straightening. “C’mon, guys, we gotta—“

She cut herself off. She realized, in a small series of starts and stops, that Lance and Hunk were standing very, very close together.

Lance’s arms were looped around Hunk’s neck.

Hunk’s hands were buried in Lance’s hair.

Their faces were flushed.

And they were both staring at her with identical expressions of blank horror.

***

“How was I supposed to know?” Pidge demanded for the third time in as many minutes as she charged down the narrow aisle. “I was sent to get you; I wasn’t _trying_ to interrupt you guys’ face sucking.”

“Face sucki— dude, you’re such a little sister,” Hunk snorted.

“Not the point,” Lance hissed. “You can’t tell anyone, Pidge. I’m serious.”

“What’s the big deal?” Pidge shot back, glancing irritably over her shoulder. “Half the Garrison thought you guys were dating. _I_ thought you two were dating at first. So you finally caught up. Big whoop.” Lance and Hunk share a glance that had way, way too much weight for Pidge to handle. She huffed and faced forward again. She could see the purchasing stations ahead, the smudge of orange that was probably Coran.

A hand on her shoulder jerked Pidge to a stop, and she whirled around, glaring. Lance pulled his hand from her shoulder and splayed both in a supplicating fashion. “Listen,” he said. “The military back home doesn’t allow members of the same unit to be involved with one another. That’s SOP.”

Pidge blinked at him. “Lance, take a look at where we’re standing,” she said. She jerked her thumb. “That guy has scales and _feathers_. We’re a million lightyears away from Earth’s military. I really don’t think those rules apply here.”

“Ngh, no,” Lance insisted. “Shiro is Garrison trained, right? He carries over a lot of that protocol in how he deals with us. He might think that me and Hunk being…it could cloud judgement.” Pidge opened her mouth, but Lance kept talking. “And even if _he’s_ okay with it, Allura might not be. She’s way more big picture, right? She might see this as a distraction.”

Pidge tilted her head, scowling; she could kind of see where Lance was coming from. She looked at Hunk, who was hovering behind Lance with his hands curled up near his chest, like he always did when he was getting nervous.

“What’re your thoughts?” Pidge asked him, resigned.

“I mean.” Hunk glanced toward Lance. “I don’t know if we even decided whether we’re actually dating.”

Lance blinked and turned to Hunk. “I don’t—did you want to make it official?”

“Okay.” Pidge turned on her heel. “I’m out.”

“No no no no, _Pidge_.” This time Lance grabbed her elbow. She shot him a glare, but he and Hunk both looked so damn panicked, that she couldn’t put much heat into it. She sighed and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

“Look. I’m not telling anyone,” she said. “I take your point about Shiro and Allura. And I’m not an asshole.”

“Oh thank god,” Lance exhaled. He dropped Pidge’s elbow and gave her a pale smile. “Thanks, Pidge. We owe you.”

"Yeah, I know.” Pidge started walking again, waving her hand. “Lips sealed.”

Lance and Hunk stayed close behind Pidge as they approached the purchasing station and Pidge handed over a few coins from her allowance for the malka egg. Coran, Shiro, and Keith were waiting for them just outside the flea market.

“Found them,” Pidge said as she approached.

“Good,” Shiro said. “Lance, Hunk, try not to wander too far from us next time.” The pair of them nodded, mollified. As their group headed back toward the transport pod, Pidge caught Lance and Hunk exchange a look heavy with some unreadable meaning. She furrowed her brow and turned away.

***

Pidge passed the time on the trip back to the castle ship interrogating Coran about the malka egg, asking whether keeping the egg warm or cool or in light would persuade it to hatch. He admitted that he had little sense of what sort of conditions malka eggs preferred, but he assured her that there must be an entry or two about them back on the ship’s central database.

Once they docked to the ship, Pidge hurried to her room with the egg in both hands. She pulled out an extra blanket and shaped it into a makeshift nest on her worktable. She nestled the egg in its center, then surveyed her work with satisfaction.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s find out what you need.”

Pidge fished a datapad from under a pile of clothes and perched cross-legged on her bed. Pulling up the castle’s databases, she entered a general search query on malkas. There wasn’t much. She frowned. The castle’s databases essentially passed as a massive digital encyclopedia, yet its contents mainly focused on major planets and their civilizations, on technical information about the ship, and other immediately useful things. Whoever had built the encyclopedia apparently had not thought that information about a small animal from a remote system would come up as an essential topic. Which made sense, logically, but it was still annoying.

After much digging, Pidge managed to gather a few relevant paragraphs and two images. She lingered over the pictures. Full-grown malka, it turned out, were small, maybe about the size of an average house cat. They were quadrupeds and looked reptilian, as they were covered with tiny scales, but their eyes were pure white with no discernable pupils. For all intents and purposes, they looked like larger than average Earth lizards. Maybe a cross between a komodo dragon and a gecko.

Pidge shifted her attention to the text. She’d been tweaking with a translation program, and she’d gotten it to the point that she could convert most written Altean to English, though overall wording and clarity left something to be desired.

“’Malka are small…omnivores spread to and from—‘ no, ‘across the Thei system,’” Pidge read aloud. “’They are many say a delicacy in Theisan culture.’ Oh.” She frowned and glanced at the egg. “Don’t worry. We’re not planning on eating you.” She hunched over the datapad and skimmed through a paragraph that more or less repeated what Coran had told her: that the eggs were well known for their hardiness and ability to remain dormant until correct conditions allowed for a hatching. Apparently, the species had developed this ability in response to a rapidly shifting climate on their home planet.

Finger trailing absently over the datapad, Pidge scanned the text for anything new. “Oh, here we go,” she murmured after several minutes. “’Planets of the Thei system now have many different climates. Origin planet of malka has also a many-typed climate, but malka are most common found in the zones eastern temperate. Temperatures in these zones range from—‘” Here she came across varying numbers which she took a moment to convert. “That’s..about 50 degrees Fahrenheit? Yeah, averaging in the low 20s in the cold season and the high 50s in the warm season. Huh.” She looked again to the egg. “You must not be super lizard-like; Earth lizards wouldn’t be happy there at all. And…” She skimmed the text again. “’The rainy season lasts for…a third of the year, usually staying clear in the morning and raining all afternoon and night.’” Pidge lit up. “’And most malka eggs have been known to hatch in the rainy season.’” She looked up triumphantly at the egg. “Perfect. You’re just waiting for cool temperatures and lots of rain, I bet. No wonder you didn’t like the flea market planet; it was almost all desert.” She tapped her chin, thinking. “I guess I could put you in the shower once a day,” she said slowly. “Yeah, I bet I could try to mimic how it is on your planet. And I can keep my room cooler.”

Satisfied, Pidge stuck the datapad in her pocket and hopped from her bed to grab the egg. She padded down the hall to the showers. They were thankfully empty, and Pidge made a beeline for the stall that she had claimed as hers back in the beginning. She placed the egg on the floor and turned on the cold water. She didn’t think Coran would be happy if she let the water run for hours—they were on a space ship, after all, and water was one of those things you absolutely didn’t want to run out of. But half an hour wouldn’t hurt, and it’d probably be a good starting point. Pidge sat on the bench running opposite the stalls and pulled out her datapad again, her legs swinging absently. She called up more information about the Thei system and passed a few minutes reading about how the people there were famous for developing improved wormhole travel technology. Pidge paused on a picture of three Theisans. They were all different shades of gray, and they best resembled giant pangolins. Not humanoid. Not like the stall keeper.

Something in Pidge’s mind stilled when she recalled the stall keeper. Her feelings on the matter were…varied. Foremost was the sheer mortification. Randomly crushing on aliens was what Lance did. (Though really, had she seen him doing the ridiculous flirting as much recently? Probably not, once she thought about it. Huh.) But the point was, getting fluttery and nervous around perfect strangers was annoying, and inconvenient, and Pidge honestly would rather do without it. She’d done it enough times back on Earth. It didn’t accomplish anything productive.

But learning a little more wouldn’t hurt anyone. She entered a new search on the datapad. And another. After trying out different key words, she found an entry that showed her a picture of an alien that resembled the shop keeper. The dizzying swirl of colors was unmistakable. Pidge skimmed the entry. They were a race known as the Ysia; they came from a moon that was in the same system as the flea market’s planet. They were most notable for their shifting skin, which “reflected various physiological factors.” They were marked as peaceful and dominantly agricultural, though they were leaning into becoming more industrial. Pidge wondered if the stall keeper had grown up working the land, if she was an immigrant to the larger desert planet, or merely traveled there to work. If she liked how industrial her moon was becoming. If she had heard of Voltron at all.

“Hey.”

Pidge slapped the datapad down and jerked her head up. Hunk was coming down the line of shower stalls, his towel draped over his arm.

“Hi,” Pidge said, reflexively shoving her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Showering?”

“Planning to.” Hunk glanced at the shower in front of the Pidge, where the water was audibly splattering. “Someone in there?”

“Uh. No. Not exactly.” Pidge found herself flushing. “It’s my egg.”

“Your what now?”

Pidge sighed and scratched the back of her head. “At the flea market. I found an egg. For this animal called a malka. Apparently, their eggs can go dormant for a long time while they try to find a good climate to hatch into? Me and Keith convinced Shiro to let me get it. I mean, once it hatches he might make me get rid of it, but as long as it’s an egg, I’m fine.”

“That’s awesome!” Hunk said, brightening. “A loophole in the no-pet policy. Very smart.” He glanced at the shower. “Does it like being wet?”

“Maybe? They come from a rainy climate.”

“Makes sense,” Hunk nodded. “What’s its name?”

“Oh.” Pidge raised her eyebrows. “Hadn’t thought of that, actually.”

“Can’t just call it, ‘egg’,” Hunk said. “If you need help thinking of a name, ask Lance. He’s great at things like that.”

At the mention of Lance, things in the air seemed to shift. Pidge pulled up her feet to hook on the edge of the bench, arms wrapped around her shins. “Has he calmed down?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Hunk’s face slid into a thoughtful expression before he closed the distance between them and sat on the bench beside Pidge, towel in his lap. “So, thanks,” he said. “For being cool about this.”

Pidge shrugged awkwardly. “You don’t need to thank me. It’s not really my business.” Hunk gave her a look. “What?” Pidge asked.

“We’re asking you to hide something from our COs,” Hunk said. “It’s your business.”

Pidge rested her cheek on her knees, frowning. “You really think Shiro or Allura would have an issue with you guys? That seems…harsh.”

“I don’t know,” Hunk sighed. “Lance really thinks so.” He scrubbed at his face. “There’s just been a lot happening at once. We only admitted—this all started a few days ago.”

“Wait seriously?”

Hunk gave her a rueful grin. “You caught us in our third ever kiss.”

“Shoot. You guys are terrible at this forbidden love shtick.”

Hunk laughed, though there was something hard about it. “Absolutely awful,” he agreed.

Pidge found herself grinning despite herself, and she bumped Hunk companionably with her shoulder. “This is a good thing, though. Right?”

“Oh.” Hunk’s grin became almost shy. “Yeah. Definitely good.”

“Well then. Enjoy it I guess.” Pidge made a face and shrugged. “Dunno, I think that’s the extent of the relationship advice I can give.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Hunk.” Pidge straightened and gestured at herself. “I’m a sixteen-year-old who’s never done anything with anyone. Not much life experience to offer.”

“Oh.” Hunk’s expression cleared. He tilted his head. “To be completely honest though, I don’t know that doing stuff makes anyone any more knowledgeable.”

Pidge gave a short bark of laughter, even as a slight pang shot through her gut, and she turned to peer at the shower stall. She hopped from the bench. “I guess that’s long enough,” she said, reaching in to press the panel that would switch off the water. Hunk levered himself from the bench to follow her, watching curiously as Pidge scooped up the damp egg and wrapped it in one of her towels.

“Guess I’ll let you shower,” Pidge said, glancing up at Hunk. Hunk nodded, then placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Seriously,” he said. “Thank you.”

Pidge nodded, still smiling. She left the shower room with the malka egg blanket bundle in her arms and her data pad hanging from one hand. The closer she got to her room, the more the pang in her gut grew.

She knew what it was. Because she loved her friends and wanted them to be happy, of course. But there was also jealousy gnawing at her insides. Jealousy that Hunk and Lance had been stranded in space with each other. That they had the luxury of being with someone they liked, who liked them back. It felt like an impossible notion to Pidge. It had already felt borderline impossible back on Earth, before Kerberos. These days…well.

She looked at the egg in her arms.

“I’m being stupid,” Pidge told it quietly.

It didn’t answer.

***

If Hunk and Lance were worried about being caught, at least the next few days provided more than enough distraction from any weird behavior on their part. Shortly after Pidge and Hunk talked in the shower room, the castle received a distress beacon from a remote planet called Uhna that the Galra apparently mined for a rare and useful mineral called ske. They responded to the distress signal quickly, hoping to disrupt the Galras’ supply of ske. They succeeded in liberating Uhna, though narrowly. Pidge just counted it as a victory that their worst injury was Hunk’s broken foot, which only needed a few hours in the pod to be mended. Lance didn’t budge from his spot in front of the pod for the entire time. It wasn’t that unusual. Lance and Hunk were close; everyone knew that. But there was a certain pinched, pale look on Lance’s face that spoke to something desperate in him. Pidge found herself watching that expression intently when she brought Lance food and water and sat with him for a while.

“You know he’s fine, right?” Pidge asked at one point. Lance made a low, flat sound before glancing at her.

“I’m sort of waiting for the universe to take him away right when we finally got our shit together,” he said. Pidge fell silent after that, unsure of what she could possibly say in response. When she finally stood to leave—because she needed to sleep; the last two days had been brutal—she squeezed Lance’s shoulder. He didn’t look up, but his hand groped toward hers and squeezed back.

***

After everyone had had a chance to rest, and after Hunk had emerged from the pod, Allura called everyone to the bridge for the standard post-mission meeting. Pidge watched Lance and Hunk sit so close together that there was no space between them.

“I’ve been in communications with the Uhna’s global parliament,” Allura was saying, calling up several holoscreens. “And now that we’ve helped them get rid of the Galra, they’re interested in diplomatic talks. Their main fear, understandably, is that the Galra will return with an even larger fleet to retake what they lost. Their military is…a bit primitive, to be perfectly honest.”

“Are they going to insist we hang around and act as their personal bodyguards?” Shiro asked, head tilted.

“I’m sure they’d like that,” Allura said. “But I’ve done my best to make it clear that it simply wouldn’t be the best use of Voltron’s resources. I’ve suggested that they start working with the Ydak people; they’re only a few light years away, and they’re a free planet with an excellent military. I’m sure the Ydak would appreciate lending protection to the Uhnites in exchange for the ske mineral.”

“And how did the Uhnites take the suggestion?” Keith asked. Allura’s expression flickered.

“Not entirely well,” she admitted. “They were very polite, of course. But they’re frightened. They have no experience with alien races outside of the Galra, and they’ve certainly never had dealings with the Ydak. It’s going to take a bit more work to convince them.”

“So, tell me if I’m wrong,” Lance said, “but this sounds like you’re ramping up to telling us we’re doing a diplomacy shin dig.”

Allura arched her eyebrows. “If I’m to assume that ‘shin dig’ means social event, then yes. They would like to thank us, for one. And I’m sure they’d also like to convince us to stay. Our job will be to make sure we depart from this planet on good terms, and that the Uhnites have a solid plan on how to defend themselves once we’re gone.”

“All right,” Shiro said, nodding. “How long until we have to head down there?”

“About four vargas,” Allura said. “Let’s meet back here in three. Have your weapons, suits, and spare clothes on hand, but I believe formal clothing will be best for this.”

“Aw yeah, costume party!” Lance cheered, standing. He hauled Hunk up by the elbow. “See you guys later, we’re gonna go raid the store room.”

“Did you not keep your clothes from last time?” Keith asked.

“Keith, buddy,” Lance scoffed, already halfway out the door. “We’re not gonna wear the same outfit _twice_.” And with that, Lance and Hunk were gone.

***

Pidge did, in fact, have her outfit from their last diplomatic event hanging up in her closet. It was an austere, robe-like outfit; Pidge had grabbed it for the simple fact that it was the first thing she’d found that was green, formal, and her size. Now, she picked at the fabric and considered that it really wasn’t her style at all.

“I feel like robes are for tall people, you know?” she said. Her malka egg sat silently in its nest of blankets, but Pidge liked to think that the embryo inside agreed with her. Sighing, Pidge tugged the robe off its hanger, draped it over one arm, and left her room to head for the cargo hold.

She half expected to interrupt Hunk and Lance doing… _something_ , but to her surprise, she found them actually trying on clothes. Lance was wearing a painfully sparkly blue set of robes while he flipped through one of the many clothing storage units. A few paces away, Hunk was in his civilian clothes while considering an outfit that included a yellow cloak.

“Nice get up,” Pidge said to Lance by way of greeting. “My eyes are already bleeding.”

“It’d be a hell of a way to make an entrance though, right?” Lance shot back, grinning widely. He glanced at the robes draped over Pidge’s arm. “Need something new?”

“Maybe?” Pidge shrugged half-heartedly and eyed the many rows of clothing. “I mean, this outfit is fine, but it’s—“

“Boring? Yeah, I was going to mention it, but Hunk convinced me to leave you alone.” Lance placed his hands on his hips and ignored Pidge’s scowl. “What’re you thinking, then? Dress? Suit? I saw something that looked sort of like a toga back there.”

“I’m not wearing a fricking _toga,_ Lance.”

“Leave her alone and let her browse,” Hunk spoke up. “Pidge, try on whatever you want, and we’ll tell you what we think.”

“I—yeah, okay.” Pidge draped her green robes over her shoulder, stuck her tongue out at Lance, sidestepped him when he tried to shove her shoulder, then delved into the rows of clothing.

If Pidge were pressed to describe Altean fashion in one word, she would have chosen ‘eclectic.’ Most of the more mundane outfits—the work suits and the pajamas and the everyday clothes— were very like Earth ones. But the high-end clothes’ fabrics and styles spanned a massive spectrum, from the sedate to the outright gaudy. Pidge wondered if it was the result of Alteans being in contact with tons of other alien species. Or who knew, maybe it was something about the Alteans themselves.

Pidge spent a long time flicking through a large collection of dresses. She tried a few on, but she found that none of them felt right to her. At one point, Pidge found herself in front of a full-length mirror wearing a summery, knee-length, pale green dress. As she stared at her reflection, she realized that she didn’t entirely recognize herself. She had no idea why. The hair, maybe. Her skin was a little paler these days. And she’d put on some muscle with all the training. But she didn’t think that explained it.

Slowly, Pidge ran her hands down the dress’ skirt. The fabric was cool and slippery, not entirely familiar. It was a perfectly nice dress, and she knew she could head back toward Lance and Hunk and show them, and they would approve, and Pidge could show up at the diplomatic event looking…off, somehow.

The thing was, she had worn dresses all the time before Kerberos. There was an old picture in the family photo album of a tiny, chubby Pidge wearing a bright blue dress and reaching for the camera with an expression that suggested she’d been shrieking with delight at something. Pidge’s mom used to tell her that Pidge had pulled the dress from a bag of hand-me-downs sitting in the living room. That it would be another year or two before Pidge started telling everyone in her high, insistent voice that she was a girl, not a boy, but that the blue dress had been when Pidge’s mom had started to suspect.

And maybe that was why, once she was older, Pidge had fallen back on dresses and skirts so often. It was like she was recreating that first, unknowing declaration of herself. As if failing to wear the right clothes might make people doubt her.

Then had come Kerberos. Then had come Pidge knowing she needed to find her family any way she could, knowing that she had to distance herself from the girl who had hacked into Iverson’s computer. The idea of pretending to be a boy had been terrifying. But it was a good cover; it put one more big step between her and Katie Holt. So she’d done it.

And she’d been okay. She’d come out the other side intact, with the important people accepting her without question. Even with her cropped hair and Matt’s old clothes, she was still _herself_.

Staring at her reflection, Pidge had the strange realization that she didn’t _need_ to wear outfits like this anymore, not unless she wanted to. She wasn’t going to endanger her identity by straying from the right outfit. She’d already proven that to herself.

Slowly, Pidge reached up and tugged the strap of the green dress off her shoulder. She’d save it, she decided. It looked good, and probably someday soon she’d feel like wearing dresses again. Just not today.

Pidge slung the green robes and dress over her shoulder and started searching again, this time with more focus. She found a whole stretch of outfits that seemed to be in her size, and sifted through the options with flicks of her hands.

She paused when she found something deep, forest green. She tugged the outfit forward and realized the fabric was brocade with a swirling green and gold leaf motif. The pattern was subtle, but when Pidge shifted the fabric, it glinted as it caught the light. Slowly, Pidge set the robe and dress on the floor and pulled the outfit from its hook.

Holding it out at arm’s length, Pidge saw that it resembled a three-piece suit. The pants and jacket were made of the subtle, glinting brocade fabric, though the jacket’s wide, swooping lapels were made of a rich, ivory fabric that popped against the dark green. The vest was the same brocade as the jacket and pants, but its dominant color scheme was gold. There was no tie, but the underlying shirt was the same ivory as the lapels, and it included a spray of fabric that, for all intents and purposes, resembled a cravat.

Pidge considered the outfit before she set it down and wriggled out of her shirt. It took some time to get all the pieces on, but when she was finished, she was absurdly pleased to find that it fit like a glove. The fabric was more flowing than she had expected, and the jacket hung a little past her waist in rich folds, like it was halfway toward becoming a skirt. It gave the whole outfit a feminine edge that Pidge found she appreciated. She stood in front of a mirror and watched the fabric swirl and shift lazily every time she moved.

She realized that she was smiling.


	2. Chapter 2

Although planet Uhna was at least as large as Mars, its entire sentient population would have barely rivaled China’s. It was a planet in a fixed rotation, which meant one half was always facing its star, and one half was always facing outer space. It meant that if any life wanted to avoid either burning or freezing to death, it had to crowd into a narrow strip of habitable land encircling the planet. As the five paladins and Allura descended toward Uhna in Black, they could see the glittering belt of artificial lights that signified the Uhnites’ cities.

“It’s actually really pretty,” Pidge commented, leaning against Shiro’s seat.

“It looks even better when we’re not being shot at,” Keith agreed.

“Entering atmo,” Shiro said, tapping at his holoscreen before gripping Black controls. “Might get a few bumps.”

Shiro was able to ease Black into Uhna’s atmosphere without trouble, and soon they were swooping toward the largest tangle of lights. It clarified into a massive, sprawling city.

“We’re supposed to land in the parliament building’s central courtyard,” Allura ordered. “Look for the building with the large pattern of a flower on top.”

“Flower spotted,” Shiro said, and swung Black around to land.

“Very good.” Allura eyed the rest of them, tugging a few times at her dress in a way that Pidge now recognized as suppressed nerves. “Now remember,” she said. “Our intention is to be gracious but firm. We want Uhna to be part of our alliance, and of course we will come to their aid if needed, but we cannot act as their personal guards. We will push the possibility of them setting up interactions with Ydak.” She paused and pressed her lips together. “And as much as I hate to say it, be on the lookout for anything strange. We’ve had enough…incidents at these sorts of events that I’m starting to think we should just expect them.”

“Yeah, good point,” Hunk said, grimacing. “I just hope we don’t yet a repeat of what happened on Idrif.”

“God, never say that name in front of me again,” Pidge groaned.

“Hunk, you know I love you, but hard same,” Lance added. Black’s viewport began to fill with a dark purple courtyard. Shiro landed Black in the courtyard’s exact center.

“All right guys,” Shiro said. “Ready to go?”

Everyone nodded, and with that, they began to file out of Black’s cockpit and to the dark purple lawn where the Uhnite parliament was waiting for them.

***

“All right,” Lance said as he nabbed another small plate of what the Uhnites called _grati_ and what the paladins were calling ‘alien jalapeño poppers.’ “I’m giving this party a hard eight point five.”

“Only eight point five?” Pidge asked, lowering her cup and raising her eyebrows. “I’d say it deserves a nine. I mean, come on.” She gestured at plate in Lance’s hand. “The food is almost as good as Hunk’s.”

“See, that’s fair,” Lance said, pointing. “And I’m definitely counting that.”

“The climate isn’t too hot or cold,” Hunk added.

“And the people haven’t tried to kill us,” Keith said.

“Right, right, I get that,” Lance insisted, waving his hand. “But the _music_ , guys.”

The other three took a moment to contemplate the small band of musicians playing something slow and dirge-like at the far end of the hall.

“Ok, fine,” Hunk said, “it’s not exactly the kind of thing you can dance to.”

“It sounds like we’re here to bury someone.” Lance tossed an alien jalapeño popper into his mouth. “So, eight point five.”

“Fair enough,” Pidge said, shrugging and taking another swig from her cup. She had no idea what the drink was called, but it was faintly sweet and carbonated, and it was close enough to soda to satisfy her. As she drank, Pidge did a cursory sweep of their surroundings. The event was being held in the parliament building’s central courtyard. The courtyard itself was the massive rectangle of purplish foliage in which Shiro had landed Black. She was still stationed there, sitting sphinxlike and looking appropriately intimidating and impressive behind her particle barrier. Small groups of Uhnites filed past her, peering up curiously.

Each side of the courtyard’s rectangle was comprised of a massive hallway. One side of each hallway contained doors leading to other rooms in the building; the courtyard side was comprised entirely of sliding panel doors. Pidge could see how each panel was made of sturdy wooden frames with sheer fabric of various colors stretched across them. The light from inside the halls shone through the panels of fabric, creating muted smears of color and pattern on the lawn. Pidge supposed that the panels could be arranged to form a solid wall, but for now, the panels were arranged to have gaps, allowing guests to wander across the courtyard and into each of the four halls. The crowd wasn’t too big, which Pidge appreciated. Fewer people meant fewer chances of someone producing a weapon.

“Oh,” Pidge said. “Ugh.”

“What?” Keith asked.

“I was just thinking that I’m glad there aren’t too many people here,” Pidge said, giving Keith a resigned grimace. “Because then there’s fewer potential threats to keep track of. I’m turning into Shiro and Allura.” Keith’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh,” Pidge said a good few seconds too late. “And into you, too.” She grinned. “Sorry.”

Keith grinned quietly back and lifted his cup as if toasting her. “Welcome to the paranoia club,” he said in a perfect deadpan. “We have t-shirts.” Pidge snorted. Keith making jokes wasn’t super common, but when he saw fit to wisecrack, Pidge took utter delight in it.

“No, dude, they’re totally checking us out,” Lance hissed. Pidge and Keith turned to find Lance peering over Hunk’s shoulder. Pidge followed his gaze to find a group of three Uhnites a few yards away.

The Uhnites were another sapien race, with the familiar body plan of two arms, two legs, one head, the whole deal. They didn’t resemble humans as much as the Alteans did, though. Pidge privately thought they looked like raptors who had almost but not entirely become primates. Their faces were narrower, their lower faces jutted out slightly, their features were much more angular, their nails were sharper. There was something almost bird-like in their sharp, jerking way of moving. By far the most alien things about them were, one, the fact that their hair better resembled fine downy feathers and two, the small secondary eyes a little above their primary eyes. Coran had informed them the secondary eyes were for catching infrared light waves. Which, as Pidge understood it, meant they could see heat.

As Pidge watched, one of the Uhnites, dressed in smoky gray robes, darted their eyes in her direction. Pidge caught a glimpse of a purple-black pupil before she glanced away.

“Who, them?” Keith gestured with his cup. “Yeah, they’ve been watching us for the last fifteen minutes.”

“Paranoiaaaa,” Pidge sang under her breath. Keith elbowed her in the shoulder.

“Has it been the good kind of watching or bad kind?” Hunk asked.

Keith wrinkled his nose. “The difference being?”

“Bad means they want to possibly jam a knife into our ribs,” Lance said, holding up a finger. He flicked up a second and grinned. “Good means they possibly want anything from an autograph to…y’know.” Lance waggled his eyebrows.

“Oh.” Keith shrugged. “No idea.”

“You better hope it stops at the autograph, Lance,” Pidge said. “You’ve got a—“ She cut herself off at the way Lance and Hunk’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “You’ve got, uh, responsibilities and stuff,” she said. She took a swig from her cup and, in a flash of inspiration, added, “You don’t need a repeat of Nyma.”

It was the right thing to say. Lance’s expression abruptly fell into a scowl, and Keith’s snort was poorly stifled.

“Okay,” Lance said, leaning toward Pidge. “The next person to bring that up owes me a dollar. It was _once_. It was _months_ ago.”

“Whatever you say, hotshot,” Pidge said, grinning.

“Eh, well, I’m willing to bet it’s the friendly kind of watching,” Hunk said. He had angled his head to examine the group again. He gave a sudden soft laugh. “I think one of them is looking at you, Pidge.

“What?” Pidge snapped, craning her neck. As soon as she did so, she saw all three Uhnites look away. Well, no, not all of them. The Uhnite in the smoky gray robes was still watching out of the corner of their eye. Pidge cut her gaze to the other three paladins, scowling even as her gut did a funny twist. “C’mon, no they’re not.”

“Why not?” Lance asked, grinning in a way that Pidge recognized from Matt right before he did something truly, wretchedly embarrassing and big brotherly. “You’re looking pretty fly in that getup.”

“Because… _because_.” Pidge drained her cup in a sharp motion. “I’m getting more of…whatever this is.”

“Aw, c’mon Pidgeon,” Lance called out as Pidge barreled toward the refreshments table. “I’ll be your wingman!”

“Fuck off,” Pidge called back. She could hear Hunk speaking, probably saying something to get Lance to stand down. Pidge focused on finding the right pitcher and pouring herself another cupful of the not-soda. She set the pitcher down carefully before she let herself turn and look for the Uhnites again. Except, she realized, they were gone. Pidge blinked at the spot where they had been, not sure what to do with the simultaneous coils of relief and disappointment twining around her chest. Then, with a sharp huff, she picked up her cup and wandered into the crowd again.

She wasn’t in the mood for Lance’s comments, so she angled herself toward Shiro, who was standing in the courtyard and talking to an older Uhnite in bright lilac robes.

“—first contact with alien species _was_ the Galra,” the Uhnite was saying as Pidge approached. “So you understand that our planet simply does not associate aliens with anything positive. Present company excluded.”

“I understand,” Shiro said, nodding. “My home planet isn’t aware of life outside of our planet either. If the Galra had…” He paused. “Let’s just say they’d probably have the same reaction.”

“Then you agree that an alliance with these Ydak things simply would not be an option.”

“I don’t know about that,” Shiro said, his voice a little too casual. “We’re in a war, Senator. I understand that making alliances with an alien race is going to be uncomfortable, but unfortunately, the stakes have been higher than ‘uncomfortable’ for a long time now.”

“Uncomfortable isn’t quite the word I would use,” the Uhnite senator said stiffly. They shifted their head slightly to eye Pidge, who had been standing awkwardly a couple of feet away. “But I see your companion needs to speak with you. We can discuss this tomorrow morning,” they said. They made a gesture with their left hand, something that Pidge had come to understand as a generic respectful sign, then departed with a rustle of robes.

Pidge inched closer as Shiro threw back his head and drained whatever was in his cup. “I owe you,” Shiro murmured after he’d lowered his arm. “She was being…very persistent.”

“If you let me skip a training session, we’ll call it even,” Pidge said.

“I’ll let you skip the next time we do pull ups.”

“Eh. Yeah, I’ll take it.” Pidge peered after the Uhnite senator. “How many of them have been trying to convince you to keep Voltron here?”

“Four or five,” Shiro said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Allura’s got it worse; I think there’s three of them ganging up on her right now.”

“Does she need help?”

“She’ll let me know if she does.” Shiro glanced down at Pidge. “So, how’re you doing?”

Pidge frowned. “Meaning what?”

“Yeah. Overall, how’re you holding up? It’s been a rough few days.”

“Oh. Uh.” Pidge ran a hand through her hair, making the curls stand up. After several seconds of silence, she said, “Okay, I’m not sure what you’re looking for here. I’m fighting a galactic war in a robot lion and trying to find my family. So, as well as I can be?” Her frown deepened. “Why, am I acting weird?”

“No weirder than usual.” Pidge rolled her eyes, and Shiro grinned. “I’m asking because worrying about you guys is my job.”

“Sounds annoying.” Shiro let out a light huff of laughter, but his gaze didn’t waver. Pidge wrinkled her nose. “You’re gonna wait for me to give an actual answer, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I’m pretty patient.”

“Geeze, okay.” Pidge crossed her arms as best as she could with a cup in one hand and squinted into the middle distance. “My malka egg still hasn’t hatched, but it hasn’t been that long, so I’m not discouraged yet. I’ve got, like, twelve major projects in the pipe, and about three of them are almost close to being done. There’s a backlog of twenty other projects I want to work on, but I’m trying that time management thing you guys are always yammering about, so I haven’t started them yet. My connection with Green seems strong. Training’s been good. I can plank for almost four minutes now, which is _not_ something I ever expected to be able to say.” She ducked her head and plucked at the lapel of her suit. “I found a new outfit. That’s nice.”

“I’m going to admit, it looks much better on you than the green robes did.”

“Yeah?” Pidge grinned despite herself. “Thanks.” She uncrossed her arms and smoothed her hand down a lapel thoughtfully, then sighed. “I’m worried about dad and Matt. Worried about mom. Miss them all. Miss Earth. All the usual stuff.”

“Yeah,” Shiro said, voice low.

“I think…I miss people. Humans. Homo sapiens.” Pidge glanced up. “I mean, obviously I’ve got you guys. But I mean…it’s just been the five of us for a long time. I miss knowing I can walk out my door and see my own species everywhere. It’s weird; I don’t think I ever realized how comforting that can be.” Shiro was watching her carefully, his expression neutral, and Pidge found herself barreling forward. “And sometimes I worry that if—when we get back home, I’ll have forgotten how to act normally.”

“Yeah,” Shiro said contemplatively. “I think when we go home, it’s going to be hard for all of us to readjust.” He shifted, hesitated, then added, “I think in some ways, it’s hardest on you.”

Pidge blinked. “Why?”

Shiro didn’t answer immediately, and when he did, he seemed to pick his words out carefully. “I don’t mean this in a condescending way,” he said. “But you’re only sixteen. And sixteen is a hard age for anyone. Sixteen is when you’re really mired in trying to figure out who you are.” He grinned slightly. “It was hard enough for me, and I was just an average snotty L.A. teenager whose biggest responsibility was keeping up on homework and not getting caught when I snuck cigarettes and alcohol at my cousin’s house.”

“Hang on, hang on,” Pidge cut in, a grin tugging at her lips. “You trying to tell me you were some kind of wannabe teenage delinquent?”

“Emphasis on wannabe,” Shiro said. He rubbed at the back of his head. “My point is you’ve got a lot more on your shoulders than most teenagers your age. And you’re handling it well. Brilliantly, actually. But I guess I still worry.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I still do plenty of sneaking.”

Shiro gave her a wry look. “Don’t think I don’t know that,” he said. He sobered again. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

“I…no,” Pidge said. “I guess you’ve got a point.” She thought back to her latent jealousy of Lance and Hunk. But she couldn’t very well voice that, so she shrugged and took a swig of her not-soda. “Not much to do about it, though,” she said. “We’ll just have to keep working to get rid of Zarkon. Sooner we do that, sooner we can go home.”

“Right,” Shiro murmured. He shifted, and Pidge felt his human hand ruffle her hair briefly. She grinned and bumped him with her shoulder.

They stood together in companionable silence for the next few minutes, watching the Uhnites mill around in their multicolored robes, listening to the slow, stately music. Despite the lobbying Uhnites, Shiro seemed almost relaxed, and that in turn made Pidge relax.

But as her gaze wandered over the crowded hall, she caught a glimpse of now-familiar smoky gray robes and a frank, dark-eyed gaze. Pidge’s gut flipped, and the Uhnite disappeared again. Pidge opened her mouth to say something to Shiro, something along the lines of, ‘this one Uhnite keeps _looking_ at me,’ when she was interrupted by Shiro suddenly bringing a hand up to his ear.

“Okay,” he said, voice grim. “That’s Allura calling for the cavalry.” Pidge shut her mouth and nodded.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Shiro heaved a hard sigh and, with a final pat to Pidge’s shoulder, turned and headed into the hall. Pidge watched him depart as she fiddled with the lapel of her suit.

Almost as soon as Shiro had disappeared, Pidge felt a heavy hand on her shoulder. She whirled around and found Hunk jerking his hand back. Lance was hovering behind him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Hunk hissed. “We just needed to ask a favor.”

“Super small favor,” Lance added.

Hunk nodded. “Itty bitty.”

Pidge looked between then and raised her eyebrows. “Do you need me to provide a cover story so you guys can go be gross somewhere?”

“Dang!” Lance said, grinning and resting his elbow on Hunk’s shoulder. “Pidge, you’re a smart cookie; anyone ever tell you that?”

“I can bear to hear it again,” Pidge said, suppressing a smile. “Just don’t disappear for too long, okay? This is Shiro and Keith we’re talking about.”

“Ugh, true,” Lance said, making a face. He took his elbow off Hunk’s shoulder and grabbed him by the crook of his arm. “Anyway, we owe you. You’re the best.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Hunk added. Pidge rolled her eyes and waved them away as they disappeared into the crowd. After a moment of thought, Pidge walked deeper into the courtyard with the vague notion of finding Keith. She’d barely managed a dozen steps before she caught yet another glimpse of the smoky gray robes, the dark eyes, a half dozen yards away.

Pidge froze. She and the Uhnite stared at one another for a solid five seconds before the Uhnite turned away. “Oh hell no,” Pidge muttered, surging forward. She had to do some ducking and weaving, but she kept her eyes fixed on the Uhnite so as not to lose them again. When she was a few feet away from the Uhnite, they looked up again and seemed to start at the realization that Pidge was barreling toward them. But they didn’t move, just remained rooted in place. They only flinched slightly when Pidge came to a hard stop right in front of them.

At this point, Pidge had to admit to herself that she had fully expected the Uhnite to bolt, and therefore she had no idea what to do next. The Uhnite was still staring at her, but Pidge didn’t think there was any real fear in the expression.

“Ok listen,” Pidge blurted. “Is there a problem?”

The Uhnite stared for another few heartbeats and then burst into a high sound that Pidge had to assume was laughter. Pidge took a half step back as the Uhnite covered their mouth with a three-fingered hand.

“Apologies, apologies, Paladin,” they said. Their voice was high; it sounded feminine. “Your accent sounds like a Kiltian’s. I, er, was not expecting that.”

Pidge considered this. “I have no idea what a Kiltian is,” she said. “So you’re going to have to tell me if that’s an insult.”

“Ei.” The Uhnite dropped her hand, her eyes widening. “No. The Kiltians are the mountain people; they have a very distinct accent. You sound just like them.”

“I…okay.” Pidge squinted. “That’s. Huh.” The Uhnite cocked her head, the motion jerky and birdlike.

“I didn’t mean to insult or frighten you,” she said.

“I wouldn’t say you frightened me, I would say you were freaking me out. There’s a difference.”

“Right. Well, then my apologies for freaking you out. I didn’t mean it.” She paused. “I’ve never _seen_ aliens besides the Galra.”

“Right,” Pidge echoed. She rubbed at her eyes briefly. “Yeah, that’s actually really understandable. Uh. Shoot. I think I’ve just made an ass of myself.”

“Ass?”

“Rude,” Pidge clarified.

“Are you all right?” the Uhnite asked abruptly.

“What?”

“Your skin is changing.” Pidge blinked at them, then realized that her cheeks were indeed heating up. Right. These guys had infrared sight.

“It’s normal,” Pidge assured them. “Normal human physiology.”

“Ei.” The Uhnite seemed to consider something before she tilted her head down briefly. “I’m Olai. It’s wonderful to make your acquaintance, Green Paladin.”

“Uh, yeah, same.” Pidge tilted her head in a rough copy of the gesture. “You can call me Pidge, though.”

“Pidge,” Olai said slowly, sounding the word out. “Pi-idge. Is it a family name?”

“Nah, originally just a nickname. It’s what I use these days.”

“Ei.” Olai shifted a few times then, in a rush, said, “Can I ask you questions?”

Pidge cocked her head. “What kind?”

“All kinds,” Olai said, her voice almost breathless. “What sort of life is on other planets. What your planet is like. What your species is like. I want to know about all of it.”

Pidge considered that this could be the opening of a trap of some kind. But there was something in Olai’s voice that was a little too earnest, a little too desperate. Sheer, burning curiosity. Pidge recognized it.

“All right,” she heard herself say. “What d’you want to know?”

***

“No, wait,” Olai said, waving both hands. “Your planet’s axis is _tilted_?”

“Yeah, totally,” Pidge said, nodding. “Which, like I said, is how we can have season. Well, seasons in certain latitudes.” Olai didn’t reply, merely looked hard at Pidge with that frank, dark gaze. Pidge grinned. “You don’t believe me?”

“I don’t have any way to corroborate what you’re saying,” Olai pointed out.

“I mean, sure, but I’m also not enough of a weirdo that I get my kicks by lying to aliens about my planet’s physics.”

“Get your kicks?”

“Find pleasure.”

“Ei.” Olai turned her head slightly, though she still watched Pidge from the corner of her eye. “All right,” she said at length. “I’ll believe you.”

Pidge dipped her head and made an ironic, acquiescing gesture with her hand. “What else?” she asked.

“Let me think.” Olai tapped her thighs in thought, and Pidge looked out over the courtyard. She and Olai were sitting in a slightly emptier corner of the courtyard, one carpeted with a riot of tiny white flowers and dotted with stone benches. Pidge and Olai were seated on one of those benches. When they’d first sat down, Pidge had been stiff with the underlying awareness that this was exactly how a trap could begin. But then she got distracted explaining basic human anatomy, and after that, she found she couldn’t dredge up quite the same level of worry.

“All right,” Olai said. “Going back to your—“ Here Olai shook her head like the idea was still too ludicrous to believe. “Your Hirta-blessed planet that can miraculously support life _everywhere_ —“

“Not everywhere,” Pidge reminded her. “Plenty of climates where life has to work hard to exist.”

“Almost everywhere,” Olai amended. “How many humans are living there, since you have so much space?”

“Oh, um.” Pidge squinted. “I think the world population was approaching 8 billion when I left.”

“8 _billion_?”

“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” Pidge shrugged. “Probably too many. Humans are sort of parasitic when you get right down to it. But our technology is keeping us out of trouble for the most part; the last really bad water war was decades before I was born.”

“But 8 billion,” Olai muttered, still sounding stunned. “We barely reach 1 billion.” She shook her head slightly. “The universe is incredible.”

Pidge felt a huge, sloppy smile smear across her face. “It is, isn’t it?” she said.

Olai made a gesture with their shoulders that Pidge took for a nod. “I wish humans or Alteans had been our first alien contact,” she said, her voice low. “The Galra have been—well, alien is synonymous with death and horror, now. There’s no curiosity about the worlds past our planet. No excitement. It’s all raw fear.” Olai tilted her head. “A long time ago, this planet was so eager to explore the sky. Now, everyone wants to keep their heads down.”

“How much space exploration has your planet done?” Pidge asked.

“Compared to the Galra and Alteans, barely anything,” Olai said. “Generations ago, before the Galra arrived, our planet was starting to explore the third asteroid belt of our system, which is a fraction of a light year away. We had no concept of how to practically achieve wormhole travel; we were barely starting to crack light-speed travel.” Olai exhaled hard. “The Galra shut down our space exploration programs completely. They didn’t want us developing in that direction. Instead, they forced our government and economy to bend all resources to mining the ske mineral.” Her fingers curled up in the fabric of her robes. Pidge found herself watching the motion with a hard lump in her throat. Uhna was far from the first planet to have a story like this one, but that didn’t make it any less galling.

Pidge sighed and brought up her legs so she could sit cross-legged on the bench, her elbows braced on her thighs. She watched the crowd in the courtyard ebb and flow. “I’m sorry your planet had to go through that,” she said.

“Thank you,” Olai replied. Her face lightened. “But we’re free now. Thanks to you and your team. I don’t know if we can thank you enough for that.”

“Just doing our job,” Pidge said lightly, her grin small. “Maybe now your planet will start exploring again.”

“I hope so,” Olai said earnestly. “That’s why I’m here. Or, why my uji is here. I was just lucky enough that she could bring some of her students.”

“Is uji like a teacher?” Pidge asked, straightening. “You’re a student?”

“I’m a junior student at the city’s institute of science, yes,” Olai said. Her demeanor had definitely become brighter. “Here, that essentially means you’re studying to improve ske mineral mining. But now…you understand that the entire world has been changed overnight. My uji, my teacher, she has ties to parliament and wants to persuade them to make restoring our centers of learning one of the first priorities. They were all but useless under the Galra; they were so determined to hobble us and keep us focused on the damn ske mineral. Now, we could go back to studying medicine and chemistry and physics. Engineering. Astronomy and space exploration.” Olai was almost vibrating.

“You’re into those last two, aren’t you?” Pidge guessed. Her grin was wider now.

“Ei,” Olai breathed. “I want to go into space at least once.”

The offer to bring Olai back to the castle ship was right at the tip of Pidge’s tongue. Of course, Allura and Shiro would never allow that. But Olai looked so bright with her want that, for a moment, Pidge knew that if Green were planetside, she would offer to take Olai up to the stars.

Abruptly, Pidge blinked. Geeze. That was pure Lance thinking, right there.

“You’re lucky,” Olai said, pulling Pidge back into the present. “Traveling all over the universe.”

“It’s not a pleasure cruise,” Pidge said, rubbing at the back of her neck. “But yeah, there are definite perks.”

“How many different planets have you been to?”

“Upwards of a hundred? A lot.”

“Which one was the strangest for you?”

“Oh, dang,” Pidge said, grinning. “That’s a great question. Let’s see. Well, there was the one where—“

“Pidge, finally. What’re you doing back here?”

Pidge and Olai lifted their heads to find Keith striding toward them. His demeanor was calm, but Pidge caught the way Keith’s eyes darted toward Olai with wary curiosity.

“Just talking,” Pidge called back, trying to keep the annoyed note out of her voice. “Is something wrong?”

“No, I just hadn’t seen you for a while,” Keith said. “Wanted to make sure you were okay.” He stopped short a yard or two from Pidge and Olai’s bench. Olai abruptly stood, straightening her smoky gray robes.

“Pleasure to meet you, Red Paladin,” she said, dipping her head.

“Oh, come on, you don’t need to go all honorable judge for Keith,” Pidge snorted. Olai straightened and gave Pidge a quizzical look. “I mean—nevermind. I’m fine, Keith. Olai and I are talking about aliens.”

Keith’s eyebrows rose slightly, but if he had any comments, he kept them to himself. Pidge could appreciate that about the guy. He knew when business wasn’t his.

“Okay,” he said easily, though there was still a stiffness to his shoulders that told Pidge he hadn’t let his guard down. “Just wanted to let you know that they have guest rooms set up for us in the residence hall. We’re going to head over soon.”

“Roger dodger,” Pidge said, giving a sloppy salute. “I’ll be there.”

“And have you seen Lance or Hunk?”

Pidge paused because she’d never actually come up with a convincing cover story. “Uh, I think I heard them talking about finding more of those jalapeño poppers. Try the kitchens?”

Keith nodded. “Yeah, I might do that.” He mumbled something polite to Olai then turned and headed back toward the crowds. Pidge watched him leave with her lips slightly pursed. She would have bet money that he was going to be keeping an eye on her and Olai. She was half tempted to grab Olai’s hand and tug her somewhere else, but she also wasn’t interested in worrying her team.

“They’re…hm. Serious,” Olai said, still watching Keith’s retreating back.

“It’s not on purpose. That’s just how Keith is,” Pidge said, waving a hand. “Don’t take him too seriously.”

Olai huffed; she sounded amused. “You’ll all be here tomorrow?”

“I think so. Allura is trying to make sure we leave on good terms with your planet.”

“Yes, I’ve been hearing about that discussion,” Olai said. She seemed to think for a moment before she tugged up the sleeve of her robe to reveal a small, silver band. She tapped it and pulled up a pale green holoscreen.

“Do you have a coms device with you?” she asked.

“I have my phone,” Pidge said. When Olai gave her a quizzical expression, Pidge reached into her inner pocket and pulled out her old Earth phone. “How’s that for some alien tech?” she said, grinning.

Olai’s eyes widened, and she reached out. “May I?” Pidge handed the phone over, and watched with barely suppressed amusement as Olai turned the phone over several times like it was something precious. It wasn’t even the latest model.

“Here, it’s on print lock,” Pidge said, and reached out to press her thumb against the center of the screen. The screen flipped to its main menu, and Olai made a softly delighted sound. She started pressing widgets at random, and jerked her head back slightly when her face appeared on the screen.

“I found the camera,” Olai said, tilting the phone toward Pidge and grinning. “This is incredible.”

“Thanks, but I’m pretty sure that holoscreen on your wrist is a lot more advanced.”

“I’m not talking about how advanced it is,” Olai said, eyes still on the screen. She managed to close the camera and, a few taps later, opened Pidge’s long-defunct email. “This is a piece of technology conceived of and designed and built by people from another _galaxy_. And it still feels somewhat familiar.”

Pidge fell silent, unsure how to reply to that. She settled for watching Olai explore her phone. She didn’t even consider that Olai would probably find the photo album until Pidge abruptly saw her and Matt’s face on the screen.

“You?” Olai said. “The other one looks just like you.”

“My brother,” Pidge said, reaching out unthinkingly. Olai glanced at her expression, paused, then handed the phone back. Pidge took it and resisted the urge to thrust it into her pocket. Instead she looked down at the photo. It was an old one, taken during dad and Matt’s training before the Kerberos mission. Pidge and her mom had taken a trip to the base to visit. Matt had complained about the physical training they were required to undergo. Dad had told them about the new, top-of-the-line ice core sampler that would be included on the ship. Mom had told dad that his excitement over ice was just as cute now as it had been in graduate school, and they had kissed, and Matt and Pidge had shrieked in faux disgust.

Pidge swiped past that picture and landed on a picture she’d taken while walking Gunther in the local park. It had been late summer, a week before her semester at the Garrison started, and the path had been shaded with thick green foliage.

“What is that?” Olai asked, and Pidge jerked, realizing that Olai had been watching over her shoulder.

“It’s called a dog,” Pidge said, angling the phone toward her. “Do you guys have pets? Companion animals?”

“Yes, of course.”

“That’s what this is. His name is Gunther.”

“It’s so green there,” Olai murmured. She looked on the verge of grabbing the phone for a closer look, but she seemed to catch herself. Instead, she lifted her wrist with the silver bracelet. “Does your phone operate with quantum computing?”

Pidge barked a laugh. “Nah, I wish. But I’ve been spending a lot of time with the castle ship’s tech, and I’ve been updating my phone as I go along. If you give me the stripped down transmission code from your device, I can probably patch that into my phone and get a connection.”

“Have you ever done that before?”

Pidge grinned. “No, but this is as good a chance as ever to try.”

They spent the next few minutes hunched over Pidge’s phone and Olai’s silver communication device, trying to tease out the proper lines of code they needed. Pidge quickly realized that while Olai wasn’t quite a techhead like her, she had a more than adequate grasp of it. She caught on to Pidge’s ideas quickly, and provided a few of her own. Standing this close to her, Pidge realized that Olai was quite tall. Pidge’s brain kept cycling back to that little fact, like an old scratched record.

She was distracted enough by it that she was caught off guard when Olai straightened and said, “All right. Let’s see if this connects.” After some fiddling on Olai’s part, Pidge’s screen lit up with an incoming call.

“Yes!” Pidge cheered, punching the air. “Nice job.” She held out a hand for a high five then caught herself a second later. “Ah, sorry,” she said. “Want to learn some Earth rituals?”

“What kind?”

“Slap my palm with yours. That’s what we do to celebrate something awesome.” Olai obliged, and her high five was slightly lackluster, but it was far better than Coran and Allura’s first attempts.

“If we don’t get a chance to see each other tomorrow,” Olai said. “Send me a transmission.”

“I will,” Pidge promised. She realized that her cheeks hurt with how much she’d been smiling.

***

The sleeping quarters that the Uhnite parliament offered were almost homey. They didn’t have the extravagance of some of the other places the paladins had slept; rather, they had a comforting air of practicality. The suite consisted of a central sitting room with three bedrooms branching off. The paladins investigated one of the bedrooms and found two beds, each with a small stack of clothes on the ends.

“Man, these beds are _comfortable_ ,” Hunk said enthusiastically as he sank into one of the mattresses. Keith was standing nearest to him, so Hunk grabbed Keith’s wrist and tugged him down. “Feel it,” he ordered. Keith made an indignant huff but allowed himself to be manhandled down. “Nice, right?” Hunk said as Keith bounced lightly a few times.

“It feels like a feather mattress,” was Keith’s verdict.

“Hang on,” Lance said. “D’you think they stuff these with their hair-feather things?”

“Oh god,” Pidge said flatly.

“That would be impractical, Lance,” Allura called out from the main room. She was busy typing away at her holoscreen, no doubt sending an update to Coran.

“Yeah, but we don’t _actually_ know, do we?” Lance pressed.

“Pidge should ask her friend,” Keith said offhandedly. He wasn’t even looking at Pidge while he said it, so he missed her slight flinch.

“Friend?” Hunk asked, snapping his attention to Pidge. “What friend?”

“Just someone I met,” Pidge said, entirely too aware of how her face was heating up and probably becoming bright pink. Stupid, pale, sun-deprived skin.

Lance stared for a beat before his face slipped into a fully shit-eating grin. “This wouldn’t happen to be the same someone who was checking you out, was it?”

“No!” Pidge barked, which was an absolute lie, but she’d be damned if she let that on. “Listen, it was just some student who was curious about Earth stuff. She wanted to ask questions about, you know, what it’s like living on a planet that doesn’t have a fixed rotation. It was a _cultural exchange_. You know, what we’re supposed to be doing at these parties? I was doing my _job_.”

“She has a point,” Shiro said mildly. Pidge glanced in his direction and realized that his expression was a little too bland. She flushed harder and looked away.

“Was it one of Tasa’s students?” Allura asked, stowing her comms device and joining them in the bedroom. “I’m glad you were talking to her, Pidge. We need them as allies. The scientists and teachers are proving to be some of the most reasonable out of that bunch.”

“Talks not go too well?” Hunk asked.

“They were…suboptimal,” Allura said. “You would think that we’re assigning the whole planet to death by daring to leave.”

“In their minds, we kind of are,” Lance said. A long silence followed that.

“I mean,” Keith said slowly. “They can’t force us to stay here, right? Worst comes to worst, we can just leave.”

“You’re technically right, but I prefer that be our last resort,” Allura said, frowning.

“Well, there’s not much left to do tonight,” Shiro said. “Let’s all get some sleep and be ready to tackle this tomorrow.”

“I call this bed,” Hunk announced, bouncing slightly.

“I’m rooming with Hunk,” Lance added.

“Keith, you want to share?” Pidge asked, and Keith nodded.

“I can take the couch,” Shiro said.

“What?” Allura asked, giving Shiro a baffled expression. “And leave a perfectly good bed empty?”

Shiro flushed lightly under his scar. “I didn’t want to—I figure you should have your own quarters and—“

“You’re talking a lot of gobha,” Allura said in an aggressively flat voice. “Use the bed, Shiro, I’m sure it’s not going to bite you. As for the rest of you, I want to see everyone alert and ready to work tomorrow. I have no intention of sleeping here for a second night.” With that, she turned with a slight swirl of her skirt and strode back into the main room.

“She sounded serious,” Keith said mildly. “I’d listen to her.” Shiro gave Keith an expression that strongly reminded Pidge of how Matt looked when she took the piss out of him. Keith gazed back with perfect innocence.

“You guys should try not to stay up too late,” Shiro said, and he too strode out. Lance snorted as soon as he was gone.

“Come on, don’t,” Hunk said, frowning lightly.

“Don’t try to tell me that Shiro being bossed around isn’t a little bit hilarious,” Lance countered. Hunk rolled his eyes, but there was too much reluctant amusement in his expression.

“Anyway, I’m beat,” Pidge said. “I’m heading in.”

“Same,” Keith said, standing.

“Have fun, you two,” Pidge called out to Lance and Hunk. “But not too much fun.” She caught a final glimpse of Hunk looking like he was stifling laughter and Lance looking mildly betrayed before she shut the door and followed Keith into the next bedroom.

This bedroom was much the same as Lance and Hunk’s, though the color scheme was beige and blue rather than beige and green. Keith and Pidge took turns using the small attached bathroom. While Keith showered, Pidge sat on her bed, toweling her hair dry and contemplating the soft cream wallpaper without really seeing it. Now that she was caught in a quiet moment, she had time to reflect on the last few hours. On Olai. The whole affair didn’t feel entirely graspable, was the strange thing. It was as if the events had happened to someone else, some alternate Pidge who had more social graces and charm than the regular Pidge had ever managed in her life. Pidge slowly ran a hand through the damp tangle of her curls and slid her attention to the single closet, where she had hung up the brocade suit. It glinted at her almost coyly. It was the suit, she decided. The suit must have done something to her, given her some odd boost of confidence. It was like she was a techy, short Cinderella, and she had spent one night talking to aliens, and now she was back to her regular life with only a thin thread of a transmission code keeping her linked.

Pidge let the towel collect in her lap and rubbed at her eyes with both hands, groaning low in her throat.

Keith stepped out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam, a towel wrapped around his waist. Pidge jerked her hands from her face and went back to toweling off her hair as Keith dressed.

After a few minutes, they were each in their beds with the light flipped off. Keith was silent though not asleep; Pidge could hear him moving around, no doubt trying to get comfortable in a strange environment. Pidge was scrolling aimlessly through her phone. It was more a comfortable habit than an actual necessity. She kept flipping back to her incoming calls log, staring at the ‘unknown number’ at the top of the list.

“Hey Pidge?”

“Hm?” Pidge flicked off her phone and propped herself on her arms to peer through the dimness to Keith’s bed. “Having trouble sleeping?”

“Well, yeah, but that’s not—“ Keith cut himself off as he too propped himself up on his forearms. The room had enough ambient light from the small window for Pidge to make out Keith watching her solemnly. “I think I need to apologize.”

“Apologize?” Pidge echoed blankly.

“For mentioning that Uhnite you were talking to,” Keith explained. “I don’t think I realized that was supposed to be a secret.”

“Oh,” Pidge said, caught in a moment of blank surprise. “Well,” she said slowly after a moment. “We weren’t exactly _hiding_. I don’t know how much of a secret…actually, not at all. It wasn’t a secret at all.”

“You didn’t like that I mentioned her, though,” Keith pointed out. “I could tell.”

“I was just annoyed because Lance was being a dick,” Pidge said. She hesitated. “Look, don’t apologize. It wasn’t a secret.”

“All right,” Keith said, though he didn’t lower himself back down. “What were you two talking about?”

“I told you, space and science and things. I showed her my phone.” Keith had an unreadable expression, and Pidge narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“Well. If you want me to be completely honest…” Keith trailed off.

“Keith, we share a head hole while making a giant fighting robot. Spill it.”

Keith rubbed at the back of his neck briefly. “If I’m objectively the worst at the whole cultural exchange thing, then you’re the second worst.”

“Yikes. Tell me what you really think.”

“Come on,” Keith said, smiling softly. “All I’m saying is you can’t blame me for being a little surprised to find you deep in conversation with someone we just met.”

“She was cool,” Pidge said, feeling faintly like she was trying to defend herself and getting annoyed by it. “I got along with the Olkari really well because we could talk about tech. That’s how it was with Olai. She’s a scientist. It’s like…there’s a similar wavelength.”

Keith seemed to think about this before nodding. “All right,” he said. “That makes sense.” Pidge watched as he settled himself back into the bed.

“That’s it?” she asked. “No more interrogation?”

“You’re telling me it was a really good conversation with someone you connected to,” Keith said. “That’s good. I believe you. Nothing else to discuss, is there?” The simplicity and truthfulness of that statement pinged hard against something inside Pidge.

“I guess not,” she said. After a moment, she sank down into the mattress too. Hunk hadn’t been lying. It was, in fact, a very comfy mattress. That somehow didn’t help Pidge get to sleep any faster, even long after Keith’s breathes had evened out, even as Pidge stared into the dimness of the ceiling and traced her finger along the edge of her phone over and over again.


	3. Chapter 3

Pidge had spent enough time in various government buildings to pick up on the constants. The long glances as she and her teammates passed, the staff members surreptitiously lingering near doorways, the constant sense that a wrong move could topple three or four carefully laid plans at a time. Places of government made Pidge feel claustrophobic.

The Uhnite parliament building on that second day felt somehow worse. It took Pidge most of the morning to figure it out, but a little before lunch she knew what she was sensing: fear. The whole building was choking on low-level panic. Pidge had known the Uhnites were scared. Intellectually, she had known that. But somehow it was different to see that fear emblazoned on every Uhnite’s face in the hard daylight, when no amount of food or music or dim moonlight could shroud it.

Before entering meetings, the team split in two for the sake of efficiency. Pidge was grouped with Allura and Hunk. Between Allura’s diplomatic training and Hunk’s natural affability, Pidge didn’t have to do much except smile and answer the occasional question about tech. Mostly, she listened as Allura hit the same points again and again: Voltron couldn’t possibly stay in one place too long without drawing Galra forces; the Ydek were nearby and a peaceful species; the Uhnites had a valuable mineral in their planet’s crust, and therefore a means for bargaining their way into necessary supplies and assistance. The Uhnite, in return, hit on their favorite points just as often: their planet’s technology had been fairly primitive before the Galra reached them; several generations of Galra rule had hobbled everything from infrastructure to government; the Ydek were an entirely unknown element, and why should the Uhnites risk a repeat of the Galra by reaching out to them?

Allura, Pidge had learned a while ago, was not an especially patient person. By midday, she was quietly fuming in a way only visible to those who knew her habits. It got especially bad after a drawn-out meeting with three senators who had, in the end, admitted that they understood the inherit danger of Voltron staying in one place for too long, but also refused to budge on the topic of allying with the Ydek. Pidge had spent a few seconds at the very end watching Allura’s long ears twitch and feeling a mounting sense of foreboding. A glance at Hunk told Pidge that he saw it too. By the time the pair of them tailed Allura out of the meeting room, Pidge was half expecting Allura to kick a wall or something.

Instead, Allura briefly buried her face in her hands, groaned hard, then dropped her hands and smoothed them over her skirt in a brisk manner. “That could have gone better,” she said. It was so utterly understated that Pidge had to hold back a bark of laughter.

“It’s not like you were putting out bad arguments,” Hunk said.

“Oh, I know that,” Allura said in a bone-dry voice.

At that moment, Pidge heard a faint sound from down the hall. She turned and spotted three Uhnites striding toward them. Pidge recognized the smallest of them.

“Olai?” Pidge said.

“Ol-what?” Hunk asked.

“Olai!” Pidge waved one army wildly, aware that a huge grin had slipped across her face. Olai made the same gesture back; Pidge could see the smile on her face too.

“That looks like Tasa,” Allura murmured. She seemed to think for a moment before moving to meet the Uhnites. Hunk and Pidge hurried after her.

“Good midday, Tasa Lie,” Allura called out once she’d drawn nearer to the group. She inclined her head. “I hope you’re doing well.”

The tallest Uhnite inclined her head in return. “As well as anyone can be,” she said. “And you?”

Allura paused. “My progress is perhaps not as swift as I’d have hoped,” she said.

“I’d suspect as much,” Tasa admitted. “Which is why I’m taking you all to get a midday meal. You must be starved.”

“Lunch?” Hunk asked, brightening.

“My thanks,” Allura said, inclining her head again. She gestured to Pidge and Hunk. “These are two of my paladins. Pidge, the Green Paladin, and Hunk, the Yellow Paladin.” Pidge and Hunk copied Allura by inclining their heads as well.

“You’ve probably heard this too many times to count, but thank you,” said the third Uhnite, a male. “There’s really no way for us to pay you back.”

“It’s our job,” Hunk said. “You don’t owe us anything.”

“This is my associate, Edar,” Tasa said. “He teaches history at the institute.” Tasa gestured to Olai. “And this is my junior pupil, Olai. I believe she and the Green Paladin have already met?”

“Last night,” Pidge said. She found herself exchanging a small smile with Olai, though she had no idea what was so amusing.

***

A half hour later, everyone was sitting around a large table that had been set up in a small side room attached to the larger dining room. The food was relatively simple, but just as edible as it had been last night.

“So what’s this again?” Pidge whispered to Olai, holding up a chunk of something purple that tasted slightly nutty.

“A jika,” Olai whispered back. “It’s a root vegetable.”

“Oh, cool, like a purple potato.” Pidge popped the chunk of jika into her mouth. “I like them.”

“Really?” Olai wrinkled her nose. “I hated them as a child. My mother used to serve them in a mash with hot piks milk. She told me it would make my eyes brighter.”

“Did it?”

“Of course not. She just needed some way to make me eat it.”

“I used to smuggle cauliflower to the dog,” Pidge said.

“Dogs sound extremely useful.”

“Oh, definitely. They’re the best.”

“—the problem is you say things like ‘only nine lightyears,’” Tasa’s voice said from the other end of the table. “There is nothing ‘only’ about lightyears, Princess.”

“The Galra brought light-speed technology, though,” Allura argued back. “You have the means.”

“And the number of people on this planet who truly understand that technology is woefully low,” Tasa replied. “When will you understand? The Galra never gave us the means to take full advantage of the technology and science they brought. They meted out just enough information to make us useful. No more.”

Hunk, Pidge realized, was listening intently with his chin in his hand and a deep frown on his face. He kept tapping his fingers against the tabletop in a way that Pidge recognized as a sign that he was thinking hard about something.

“Surely with your new freedom, you’ll be able to increase the number of people who understand light-speed technology,” Allura said. “You still have the ships. You can reverse-engineer, if nothing else.”

“That can take years,” Hunk spoke up. “Listen, Allura, they have a fair point. Humans had a lot of starts and stops when it came to developing light-speed travel. It takes time, even if you already have working prototypes.”

Allura considered Hunk for a beat then exhaled hard. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you’re right. That makes sense.” She turned to Tasa and Edar. “I just want Uhna to be safe while it finds its feet again. I want your people to be able to rebuild and heal without constantly fearing for your lives. Which is why a relationship with the Ydek is so imperative.”

“They are utterly unknown,” Edar said. “We have no concept of them.”

“I mean, do you want to see a picture?” Pidge asked. Everyone’s attention shifted to her.

“A picture?” Tasa echoed.

“Ei,” Olai said. Pidge turned to find her watching Pidge closely. “I think that would help.” Pidge nodded.

“Allura, do you have your datapad?” Pidge asked. Allura wordlessly produced her datapad from her skirt and handed it down. Pidge fiddled with it for a few seconds, calling up the castle ship’s database. After a quick search, she found the entry for the Ydek.

“Here,” she said, handing the pad down the table. Tasa and Edar leaned in toward the pad to examine the image Pidge had pulled up. Edar let out a sudden amused sound.

“They look like overgrown irpits,” he said.

“No they don’t,” Tasa said, though she was squinting like she was unsure.

“Olai? Verdict?” Edar said, and handed the data pad over. Olai carefully examined the image, and Pidge peered over her shoulder. If Pidge had to find an Earth analogue for the large, hair-covered Ydak, she’d have shot for sasquatch with a little bit of reindeer mixed in, considering the horns. Oali nodded.

“Ei,” she said. “Overgrown irpits.” She pointed at the Altean text. “What's this?”

“It’s just an overview of the Ydek society,” Pidge said. “Biology. Culture. Environment. Things like that.”

“What does it say?”

“If I flip it to English, I can tell you.”

Olai wordlessly handed the datapad over, and Pidge could feel everyone’s eyes on her as she changed the text. She cleared her throat. “I’ll give the brief version. This says that the biggest thing the Ydek are known for is their resource management. They come from a planet with relatively little liquid water, and the planet’s orbital path is farther from its sun than the norm, so most of the planet is covered in year-long ice. Hence the fur. They have developed tightly efficient ways of staying warm, growing and catching food, and building cities. The simple elegance of their engineering is also well known.” Pidge scrolled through a few paragraphs. “This talks about their reproduction and mating. Uh, this is about their metabolism; apparently it’s pretty fascinating from a physiological perspective.” Pidge glanced up. “There’s a lot here.”

“Perhaps we should transcribe the text,” Allura said. She spoke carefully, like things had finally settled into a promising arrangement and she was wary of disturbing it.

Tasa paused before making an acquiescing sound. “Ei,” she said. She also spoke slowly. “I think that would be good.”

***

Between Galran, Altean, and myriad other alien languages they had already encountered, Pidge and Hunk had a well-established method for developing translation algorithms. While Tasa, Allura and Edar continued to talk at one end of the table, Hunk and Pidge worked on a borrowed holopad to flesh the program out. Olai watched intently and occasionally asked questions. Hunk and Olai had been perfectly friendly with each other earlier, but as Olai asked more and more questions, and as Hunk answered them and offered his own questions in return, Pidge could tell they were well on their way to becoming friends. The cocktail of excitement that they were getting along and the quiet, small jealousy that Olai was paying attention to someone else was confusing, though. Pidge did her best to ignore it.

“Wait, so you guys have _thirty_ different pronouns?” Hunk asked.

“Ei. Is that a lot?”

“More than most Earth languages, that’s for sure.”

Olai made a dismissive sound. “That’s just in Hadrin,” she said. “Other regions’ languages can have even more. I think the Kifans have close to 200.”

“That’s incredible,” Hunk said, shaking his head and grinning as he typed. “I love language.”

“So hang on,” Pidge said. “Are the pronouns based on gender?”

“Mm. Partially. It also includes family history, what region you’re from, your sexuality. It’s a lot of factors.”

“Huh,” Pidge said. She peered idly at the screen as Hunk worked then leaned forward. “Don’t forget that one looped tag to account for homophones.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Hunk said.

It took another twenty minutes, but soon Hunk and Pidge had a roughly completed translation program prepared, and after another five minutes of processing, they were able to present Allura, Tasa, and Edar with a translated text.

“Impressive,” Tasa said as she skimmed the text. “It almost reads like it was translated by a person.”

“There’ll be some bugs, obviously,” Hunk said.

“But someone can keep fiddling with the code and improve it,” Pidge added.

“Good work, Paladins,” Allura said. “Tasa, Edar. I am scheduled to meet with the military committee soon, but I’d appreciate it if you could both join me.” Tasa and Edar both agreed, at which point Allura turned to Hunk and Pidge. “Track down the other three, if you would,” she said. “I’d like Shiro with me in that meeting.”

***

Olai accompanied Tasa, Edar, and Allura to the meeting, but she promised to catch Hunk and Pidge again once they returned with the other three paladins. Pidge waved to Olai as she disappeared down the hall, and Olai waved back.

“I liked her,” Hunk said decisively as he and Pidge made their way down the hall.

“She’s pretty cool,” Pidge said, and realized she was smiling. Again.

“She _is_ pretty cool,” Hunk said. Something about the tone in his voice made Pidge glance up and find him watching her with a wry grin. Pidge’s face snapped into a scowl.

“Would you stop?”

“Stop what?”

“You know what, dummy.”

“Wow. Dummy. Harsh, Pidge. Very harsh.”

Pidge huffed and picked up her pace to pull ahead. Hunk laughed and jogged to catch back up. “Pidge, Pidge, come on, I’m just teasing,” he said. He jostled her shoulder. “Look, it only serves you right for giving me a lot of shit about Shay being my girlfriend.”

Pidge rolled her eyes, but she found that whatever annoyance she’d had was already starting to evaporate. Annoyance toward Hunk didn’t tend to last very long.

“We’ve talked _twice_. She’s easy to get along with. That’s all.”

“Fair enough,” Hunk said, holding up his hands and still grinning.

***

The next few hours passed in flurries of meetings during which the mood and tone seemed to change at an alarmingly quick rate. At some point, Pidge stopped trying to keep track of it all. Having Olai around made it easy. She kept finding Pidge, whether it be in one of the larger meeting rooms or the smaller side halls. And yes, that was partially due to Tasa and Edan keeping close to Allura and Shiro’s side, but at some point, Pidge couldn’t help but get the distinct sense that Olai _wanted_ to stay close to her. It was nice.

It didn’t take long for Pidge to realize that others were watching all this play out. At one point, Pidge caught Lance giving her a thumbs up and huge, shit-eating grin. Hunk kept _smiling_ at her. Keith managed to act mostly normal, but even he lingered a little closer to Pidge than usual.

Pidge ignored them. Instead she listened intently while Olai explained in quiet whispers some historical event that gave context for the current discussion or answered Olai’s questions about how interplanetary relations tended to work and whether translator technology was reliant across all species.

It took until late afternoon for Allura to finally give small indications that discussions were going in the direction she wanted. “I’ve convinced them that we should be able to leave without them panicking,” Allura said as the six of them gathered in a small antechamber to regroup and take advantage of the water and platters of food someone had thought to bring them. “So I plan on us heading back toward the castle ship in a varga or two.”

Pidge rolled in her lips and thrust her hand into her pocket to feel at the edge of her phone.

“But most of the parliament still isn’t convinced about working with the Ydek,” Hunk added. “Shiro and I couldn’t get the military committee to budge in that second meeting.”

“I would never expect that change to happen in a single day,” Allura allowed. “But I think that I’ve persuaded Tasa and Edan that the Ydek are the planet’s best hope for success going forward. They’re smart, and they’re persuasive, and they have resources. I’m cautiously hopeful they can sway enough of the parliament in the coming rotations.” Allura glanced to Pidge. “I’m convinced that Olai was an important part of their being persuaded. Good thinking on befriending her.”

Lance abruptly snorted. Pidge aimed a kick at his shins. “Thanks,” she said to Allura, ignoring the way Lance was now cursing under his breath.

“So, what now?” Keith asked. “Are we done?”

“There’s a few more meetings I need to set things in place,” Allura said. “But yes, I think we’re almost done.”

A few dobashes later, as they filed out of the room, Lance nudged at Pidge’s arm. “I’m gonna _bruise_ ,” he muttered, though there wasn’t much heat in his voice.

“Listen,” Pidge said, glancing up at him. “If I’m keeping your little secret on the DL, I reserve the right to kick you when you say stupid things.”

“That sounds entirely like blackmail,” Lance said. He paused. “I didn’t even say anything.”

“Eh. Tomayto, tomahto.”

“You’re a little turd, you know that?”

“And that’s why you love me,” Pidge replied, and grinned toothily at him.

***

Olai wasn’t in any of the final handful of meetings, and Pidge did her best not to let the sense of disappointment grow too thick. It was silly; she recognized that. She’d barely known this person for a day, and she was getting a tight sensation in her chest every time she scanned a room and didn’t find the frank, dark-eyed gaze.

At one point, in the final meeting, Pidge stood and edged her way along the bench to exit the room. Pidge squinted as she moved from the dim meeting room to the brightly lit hallway, so it took her a moment to realize that someone was standing there.

“Pidge!”

“Olai?” Pidge grinned and hurried over to where Olai was seated on a low bench. “What’re you doing here?”

“I heard this was going to be your last meeting before you left,” Olai said, standing. “I was waiting for you to come out so I could say goodbye.”

Pidge nodded, still grinning absently. “I wish I didn’t have to go,” she heard herself say.

Olai’s expression brightened. “Do you want to stay?” she asked. “I could ask Tasa—I have an extra sleeping mat in my dormitory. I’m sure my roommates wouldn’t mind.”

For a brief moment, Pidge envisioned what that would be like. Not moving on from an alien planet, but staying put for once. Learning more about the culture and the people and the tech. Maybe Pidge could become a student like Olai; she missed going to classes.

In the next moment, Pidge shook her head, faintly horrified at herself. Dad and Matt. Who would search for dad and Matt?

“I can’t do that,” she said, voice stiff. “I have too many—there’s things I need to do.”

Olai’s expression softened. “Of course.” She laughed lightly. “No, of course. You’re a _paladin_. Of course you have responsibilities.”

“But maybe one day after Zarkon is gone,” Pidge added. “I could come back and stay for a while.” She brightened. “Maybe one day I can bring you to see Earth.”

“Can I meet your companion animal?”

“Gunther would love you.”

Olai laughed again, though this time it seemed more subdued. For a moment they stood silently; the silence wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but Pidge thought there was a strange edge to it.

“Let’s walk,” Olai said suddenly, and Pidge nodded. Without discussing it, they started moving toward the parliament building’s inner hallways and central courtyard. The building was fairly quiet; Pidge got the sense that ever since the Galra had been driven from the planet, ‘business as usual’ had more or less gone out the window. It would take a long time for the government to find its footing again. Really, Pidge considered, it was little wonder that most of the senators were caught in fear at a moment like this.

“What do you think is going to happen?” Pidge asked apropos of nothing. “Now that you guys have your planet back?”

“Almost anything seems possible,” Olai said, huffing humorlessly. “It’s not anarchy. But there’s a strange energy in the streets. I talked to my parents last night; they live in a city a few pips south of here. They said the parties are still going.” Olai was silent for a beat. “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose, in the end, people still need to live their lives. They still need to eat and put their children to bed and open their shops every morning. There’ll be a lot of confusion, but I hope it’ll be tempered by all the boring, day-to-day things.”

“Are you going to keep going to your classes?” Pidge asked.

“Ei,” Olai said. “But Tasa is already talking about majorly changing the curriculum for our program.” She grinned abruptly, and Pidge realized that Uhnite teeth were a tiny bit sharper than human teeth. “There’s so many possibilities right now.”

They fell into silence again until they reached the central courtyard with its purplish foliage and Black sitting patiently at the far end. Olai lowered herself on one of the benches, and Pidge followed.

“It really is an incredible piece of technology,” Olai said, and Pidge took a moment to realize Olai was referring to Black.

“They are,” Pidge agreed. “It’s like piloting a ship that’s weirdly alive and can…not _literally_ talk to you, but you’re always aware what it wants and what it thinks about things. It’s hard to explain.” Pidge paused. “They all have distinct personalities, though. Green, my lion. She asks me a lot of questions. Or she tells me things she knows about whatever we’re seeing. She’s…her presence is very busy, you know? Always moving and looking for new things to investigate.”

“That sounds nice.”

“I think she’d like you.” Pidge tilted her head toward Olai. “One day, you should meet her.”

“Really?” Olai turned toward Pidge, eyes wide. “Is that allowed?”

“Eh.” Pidge shrugged. “I mean, she’s my lion.”

“That’s two promises, then,” Olai said. “One trip in the Green Lion and one visit to Earth. I’m holding you to this.”

Pidge gave a raspy laugh and wondered why her heart was suddenly slamming so hard against her ribcage. Or, she had an inkling as to why. She just had no idea what to do with the information. Things like this didn’t _happen_ to her. She wondered, wildly, if she was supposed to do something like put an arm around Olai’s waist or kiss her or say something—what? Except what if Olai didn’t know what those gestures meant? What if kisses were incredibly rude in Uhnite culture? Why did Pidge want to kiss her, even? Did she actually want to do that, or was it something she felt like she was expected to do? Why the hell was she having these thoughts about someone she’d known for less than a day? And it was silly, anyway, because Shiro and Allura might not want the paladins to get entangled in romantic relationships, and if Lance and Hunk were wary than Pidge definitely should be—

“—ether it’s incredibly developed AI or something more than that,” Olai was saying.

“What?” Pidge jerked her head in her direction.

“The lions. Voltron,” Olai said, her eyes still on Black. “I was talking to Hunk about it today. He kept calling it ‘space magic,’ and he couldn’t explain what he meant by that.”

“Oh. Uh, yeah, it’s hard to explain,” Pidge said. “I mean, how can I sort of mind-talk with a robot lion? _I_ have no idea. It’s something to do with quintessence.”

“Quintessence?” Olai asked, turning. “I thought that was a sort of fuel.”

“It’s life force,” Pidge said. “It’s how the lions and the castle ship work. It’s—“ Pidge huffed and ran a hand through her hair. “It’s almost like this meeting between science and spiritualism. Or magic? I don’t understand how it works, really, but it’s undeniably _there_.”

“Hm,” Olai said thoughtfully. “Maybe once a civilization reaches a certain stage of advancement, their science basically becomes magic.”

“Y’know, I’ve definitely considered that,” Pidge said. “But does it come before or after the stage where we’re all supposed to upload our consciousness into computers? Because that’s the part I was always excited about.”

“What in jisa are you talking about?”

“You’ve never—it’s this theory back on Earth,” Pidge said. As she launched into a rough outline of whole brain emulation, she could feel her heart rate slowing back down, her breathing growing steadier again. She focused on the conversation, not on whatever muted, panicked impulses were coming from the back of her head.

Olai was in the middle of explaining a paper she’d recently read about wormhole time theory when, across the courtyard, Pidge spotted the familiar figures of her team. Shiro, Allura, and Hunk seemed to be discussing something animatedly; Lance and Keith were arguing. The sight was utterly familiar, and it prompted a bloom of fondness in Pidge’s chest.

“I guess it’s time for you to leave.” Pidge turned to find Olai watching the approaching figures as well.

“You should see if you can send me that paper,” Pidge said. “I sounded interesting.”

Olai nodded. She turned toward Pidge again, and Pidge wondered if she was feeling the same thing. Like there was something they were supposed to do in the half minute before the others arrived.

Silently, Olai reached across the space between them and placed two of her fingers on the inside of Pidge’s wrist. Pidge started but didn’t pull away. Olai’s skin was cooler than she had expected. Pidge couldn’t read her expression.

“I’m very glad we got to meet,” Olai said. “Are we going to stay in touch?”

“We went to all that trouble synching our coms devices. Of course we are,” Pidge replied. Her heart rate had picked back up, and now her mouth was dry as well. She wondered if Olai could feel her pulse quickening.

Then, just as silently, Olai withdrew her hand and stood. “Good,” she said. Pidge stood as well. She wondered if she should ask what the gesture had meant. She wondered if she should reciprocate the gesture, or give an Earth gesture. Like what. A hug? Before Pidge could act on any of that, she realized that the rest of her team was upon them, and Hunk’s hand was clapping her shoulder and he was saying, “Everyone was freaking out about where you’d disappeared to, but I kept telling them you were fine.”

“Ei,” Olai burst out. “I didn’t think of that. Apologies.”

“No need,” Allura said smiling.

“We’re heading back, Pidge,” Shiro said. “You ready?”

“I—yeah.” She turned to Olai. “I’m going to try and call you once I reach the castle ship, okay?”

“I’ll wait for it.” Olai turned to the others and inclined her head. “Thank you again for all your help. We won’t forget what you did.”

“And we won’t forget your part in helping us with our work today,” Allura replied, every inch the princess. “I look forward to hearing what you accomplish in the future, Olai.” Olai beamed.

As the particle barrier fell away from Black and everyone filed in, Pidge lingered near Olai. “Do you guys have hugs?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“Good.” Pidge stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Olai. Olai was stiff for a second or two before she returned the gesture. She was all cool skin, and she was tall, but it was a good hug. Pidge didn’t especially want it to end.

“Pidge?” That was Lance.

“Yeah,” Pidge called back. She pulled away from Olai and, again, was startled by the sheer weight sitting in her chest. “Well, see you later, I guess.”

“Goodbye,” Olai said. Pidge nodded, turned, and started up Black’s ramp. She glanced back one last time to find Olai watching her before the hatch closed.

When Pidge turned forward again, she saw Shiro starting Black up. Hunk, Keith, and Allura were standing behind his chair discussing something about fuel cells. Lance was nearer to the cockpit’s entrance; he was watching Pidge carefully, his expression uncharacteristically solemn. Pidge got a sudden sense of camaraderie with him.

“I’m fine,” she said to the questions hovering on Lance’s face.

Lance nodded. “Sure.” He held out his arm slightly, and Pidge slid over to let him card his fingers through her hair once, twice. Somehow, the action was like a pin in a balloon, and Pidge felt herself deflate so fast and hard that it was borderline painful. She leaned against Lance’s side and rested her head on his shoulder while his fingers continued to run through her hair. He let her stay there for the rest of the trip up to the castle ship, and even though the others had to have noticed, they were diplomatic enough not to say anything.


	4. Chapter 4

The coms devices worked, which was immensely satisfying. Pidge, true to her word, called as soon as Black reached the castle ship and she could make her way to her bedroom. There were a few tense seconds of blank screen in the beginning, but then the screen flicked onto an image of Olai. Pidge watched her expression brighten.

“It worked!” Olai cheered.

“We’re _geniuses_ ,” Pidge agreed.

They only talked for a few minutes; Olai was with Tasa and Edat again, and they were preparing to return to the institute that evening. They promised to talk again soon, and then Olai’s image disappeared. Pidge watched the blank screen for another few seconds before she let the phone drift down into her lap. She looked around at her bedroom, at the brocade suit she had hurriedly tossed over a chair when she’d come in, at the red malka egg sitting in its nest of blankets. She’d only been gone a day, but it somehow felt longer. With a sudden sigh, Pidge levered herself from the bed and crossed the room to grab the malka egg. She weighed it in her hands, as if she’d find some difference, but it felt just the same as before. Shrugging to herself, Pidge headed toward the showers. Time to go back to business as usual.

***

The next few days passed normally. Or, at least their version of normal. Most of it involved training (Pidge made good on Shiro’s promise to let her skip one day of pull ups, much to Lance’s outrage) and routine maintenance. Every evening, Pidge waited for a call from Olai, and they talked for as long as both could get away with. Pidge got into the habit of hooking her phone to a holoscreen and setting it up beside her while she worked on her projects. She did her best to explain what she was doing for Olai, who was invariably interested. In turn, Olai would talk about her classes that day, or share papers and interesting passages she had come across during her studies, or keep Pidge abreast of the daily going-ons on Uhna. The question of whether to contact the Ydek was quickly becoming a central topic of public discourse, Olai told her. The parliament was starting to enter serious discussions about the proper course of action.

“It’s a little frightening,” Olai reported on night. “But it’s the most energized this planet has felt in a long time.”

The evening calls became something of a nightly ritual, and Pidge became used to chatting idly with Olai while she worked. She didn’t even realize it had become so engrained in her schedule until the calls were abruptly cut off.

It happened after they made a long wormhole jump to a system several million lightyears from Uhna’s system. It wasn’t the first wormhole jump they’d made since Uhna, so Pidge hadn’t been expecting it interfere with her coms device. But that evening, Pidge waited for hours, only paying half attention to her work, before it dawned on her that maybe Olai’s calls weren’t getting through. Her suspicion was confirmed when she tried calling Olai and got an error message. Pidge blinked at the error message, muttered, then started trying to troubleshoot. She kept at it for most of the night, but no matter how many patches she tried in however many configurations, the error message remained firmly in place. Finally admitting defeat, Pidge stumbled from her workshop to find either Hunk or Coran. It took a few circuits of the central living area for Pidge to realize that it was well past bedtime, and everyone was most likely asleep. Pidge found herself standing in the bridge, phone hanging from her hand, and feeling like a petulant kid who’d had something taken from them.

“Number Five?”

Pidge started and realized that she wasn’t alone. Coran stood from where he’d been sequestered in a far corner of the bridge.

“Why are you still up?” Pidge asked blankly.

“Might ask the same thing,” Coran said. Pidge deflated.

“Yeah, touché,” she said. “I uh—“ She held up her phone briefly. “I got caught in a project, I guess.”

“And you need a second opinion?”

“If you’re not too busy…” Pidge trailed off, eying the blinking console where Coran was working.

“Not at all,” Coran said. “I could do with a break. Bring it over.”

Pidge approached him and, at Coran’s insistence, seated herself in the console’s second chair. “It’s a coms issue,” Pidge explained, placing her phone on the console. “Me and a, uh, a friend I made from Uhna, we synced up our coms devices so we could talk once I left. It’s been working really well up until now.”

“With this thing?” Coran asked, picking up the phone gingerly. “Impressive.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Pidge said, cracking a smile. “Earth technology is inferior in every possible way. I know the song and dance.”

“I’m certain I’ve never said anything so uncouth,” Coran said, his voice sly. “Now, show me where you have the code stored.” Once Pidge showed him the correct screen, Coran fell silent as he scanned Pidge and Olai’s work. It took him several dobashes, but finally he looked up.

“Now I’ll admit that coding was never my specialty,” he said. “But this looks well done. No obvious holes.”

“Yeah, frankly, I didn’t think it was the coding either,” Pidge said. “I mean, it’s been working until tonight. The main change has been the wormhole jump this morning.”

“Hm,” Coran murmured. “This is all based on quantum computing, so technically, wormhole jumps shouldn’t interfere. Neither should such pithy issues as distance. I send and receive communications across far greater distances than this every other cycle.” He fell silent, still ruminating, and Pidge stayed quiet in case she interrupted his train of thought. Finally, Coran set the phone on the console again and leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. “Right,” he said. “I have two theories.”

“Okay?”

“Theory one.” Coran held up one finger. “We’re near some sort of major celestial event that is warping space-time badly enough to disturb the quantum particles.”

“Like a black hole?” Pidge asked.

“Nothing so common,” Coran said, waggling his finger. “I’m talking about events so large and deep that to even tackle the concept of them could potentially snap our puny brains.”

Pidge blinked. “Oh. Uh, are any of those around?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but you can fill a whole universe with the things I’m unaware of,” Coran said cheerfully. “Now, theory two.” He held up a second finger. “Something is wrong with your friend’s end of the coms line.”

Pidge’s shoulders slumped. “That sounds way more likely.”

“Might have you agree with you there,” Coran said, patting Pidge’s shoulder.

“But—wait, how can I fix this if the source of the problem is a million light years away?” Pidge asked.

Coran shook his head. “I’m afraid you can’t,” he said. “You’ll have to trust your friend—what was their name?”

“Olai.”

“Ah, yes, Allura mentioned her. You’ll have to trust Olai to find a way to fix it.”

Pidge exhaled hard and bumped her glasses up to rub at the bridge of her nose. “Well that’s perfect,” she muttered.

“Have some faith, Number Five,” Coran said, and handed her the phone. “And in the meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for any anomalies that might be warping the signal.”

“Thanks, Coran,” Pidge sighed as she accepted the phone. “Sorry to bother you.”

“It wasn’t any bother.” Coran leaned back in his seat again, fingers interlaced behind his head. “I must say, I haven’t known you to bother to sync coms with anyone before.”

Pidge shrugged noncommittally. “First time for everything.”

“Must have been something about this Olai person that struck you.”

Pidge shot Coran a suspicious look, but he was watching her with open curiosity. He was probably bored, Pidge realized. Probably liked having someone to break up the monotony of a late night spent working.

Pidge brought her feet up onto the chair and tapped her phone against her thigh. “It was like how I was able to connect to the Olkari,” she finally said. “She seems to understand how I think. And I understand her. We’re operating on the same wavelength. And I guess I don’t always meet people like that, so when I do, I sort of. Hang on to them.”

Coran nodded. “Understandable,” he said. “I had people like that, too.” He fell silent, his eyes on the blinking console without seeming to see it. Pidge watched the side of Coran’s face and tried to imagine him as a young man charming people left and right at diplomatic events. And then she realized that all the people running through Coran’s mind had to be dead now. Her gut twisted.

“Can you tell me about them?” she heard herself ask.

Coran’s expression brightened. “If you’re interested,” he said.

“Sure.” Pidge leaned back in her chair. “I’m too keyed up to go to bed anytime soon. I want to know what it was like back in the day.”

Coran stroked his moustache, thinking. “Would you like to hear about the time I accidentally became engaged to two princes and a viceroy in the space of five vargas?”

Pidge’s eyebrows flew up. “ _Accidentally_ engaged?”

“Believe me, that’s not even the most interesting part. All three were at war with one another, too.”

“Coran,” Pidge said, smothering a grin. “Back on my planet, we have a term called ‘full of shit’ and—“

“All absolute truth,” Coran said solemnly; he lay a hand over his chest. “I swear by my grandfather’s welder.”

“Oh, your grandfather’s _welder_ ,” Pidge said. She waved a hand. “Well in that case, regale me.”

“Thank you.” Coran tugged at his lapels. “Now, it all began a few rotations after I first started working under Alfor…”

***

Over the next few days, Pidge continued to fiddle with her phone in hopes of finding a fixable problem on her end of things. She had Hunk take a look, but like Coran, he couldn’t find anything obviously wrong.

“I think Coran’s right,” Hunk told her one afternoon after handing the phone back. “I must be on Olai’s end.”

“Right, right,” Pidge murmured, taking the phone back and staring into its blank screen. Hunk nudged her with an elbow.

“You worried?” he asked.

“A little.” Pidge lifted her head and made a face. “I guess it _could_ just be a technical glitch or interference on her end.”

“But?”

“I dunno. The political climate is shaky there right now.” Pidge ran a hand through her hair, making the curls stand up. “What if something happened? Like a riot or a coup. What if the Galra came back and stared attacking and her coms device got destroyed? What if she—“

“Hey, hey,” Hunk’s hands darted up to grip Pidge’s shoulder. He jostled her lightly. “Hey,” he said again. “That kind of worrying is my thing, Pidge.”

“But am I wrong?” Pidge asked, her voice high.

“Allura has a coms line to the parliament there,” Hunk reminded her. “If something happened, we’d have gotten a notification.”

“But what if—“

“Pidge.”

Pidge blinked then dropped her phone into her lap and rubbed at her face. “I know,” she muttered. “I just haven’t heard _anything_ for four days now.”

“It might be a really tricky glitch.”

“She might not want to talk to me anymore.”

The words slipped out like a wet bar of soap shooting out of a hand, and Pidge felt her face redden. She kept her head ducked.

“Nah,” Hunk finally said. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know that,” Pidge shot back, lifting her head enough to scowl.

“Fine. I’m making an educated guess,” Hunk said. “But honestly, Olai did not sabotage her coms device because she doesn’t want to talk to you.” He snorted. “Are you kidding? She barely left your side. Of course she wants to talk to you. I bet she’s working hard to fix it right now.” Pidge didn’t reply, too caught between embarrassment at herself and trying to convince herself that what Hunk was saying made sense.

“D’you think she likes me?” Pidge asked, barely above a whisper.

Hunk paused and slid his hands from her shoulders. “Likes you, or _likes_ likes you?” Pidge shrugged. Hunk hummed in thought. “I mean, I don’t like to assume social cues are the same across species,” he said. “But if you’re asking my two cents, she’s into you.” Pidge’s heartrate picked up. “And something else?” he added. “You lit up around her. Like, _really_ lit up.” Pidge pressed her lips together.

“This is so stupid,” she muttered.

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. I’m getting panicky over this. I _hate_ this. I don’t—“ Pidge scrubbed a hand over her face. “Hunk, I don’t have any experience with this kind of thing. I only know how to get crushes on girls and then hide those crushes _really_ well. I don’t _know_ what to do if they—ugh.”

“Hey, yeah, I get that,” Hunk said. His voice was softer. “I didn’t mean to stress you out. Seriously, not knowing what you’re doing is totally normal. There’s no race or timeline or anything. If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen. And if it isn’t, it won’t.”

“Yeah, okay,” Pidge murmured. “Is that how it was with you?”

“What?”

“You and Lance.”

Hunk was silent for so long that Pidge was worried she’d said something wrong. But when he spoke, his tone was thoughtful. “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “We’ve been best friends since our first year at the Garrison, and I knew I just…liked spending time with him. I liked spending a _lot_ of time with him. I think it took a while to realize—you know.” Hunk rubbed at the back of his neck and gave a small, bashful smile. “And then for a year, I was stuck with this stupid crush weighing me down, thinking he only liked me as a friend. And it took me until a month ago to figure out he liked me too. He’d liked me for a long time, apparently.”

“Wow,” Pidge said. “That’s so freaking sweet, I think my teeth just rotted out of my head.” Hunk snorted and flicked at her ear, making Pidge laugh and jerk away. “You know I’m happy for you guys, right?” Pidge asked.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks. That means a lot.” Hunk sighed abruptly and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can I admit it’s really nice that at least one other person on this ship knows?”

“Oh,” Pidge said, heart sinking. “Is this hard on you?”

“Not that I’d ever tell Lance, but yeah,” Hunk sighed. “I really don’t think anything bad would happen if we told Shiro. But Lance is so _insistent—_ ” He cut himself off and shrugged. “Maybe I’ll convince him one day.”

“Want me to talk to him?”

“Nah, he’d just get defensive. It’s okay. I shouldn’t complain.”

“Hey, if you’re willing to listen to me whine, it’s only fair I do the same.” Pidge grinned thinly at him. Hunk snorted. They fell silent for a moment while Pidge listened to her heartrate slowly decline.

“If Lance is right, though,” Pidge murmured. “Then maybe I wouldn’t be allowed to date anyone anyway.”

Hunk made a frustrated sound. “See, that’s just _silly_ ,” he griped. “They can’t _forbid_ us from things like that.”

“Can’t they?”

“No.” Hunk’s tone was unyielding. “Besides, Olai’s a civilian. Not the same situation at all.”

“Just a whole other set of problems,” Pidge observed bleakly.

Hunk eyed her. “This is really eating at you, isn’t it?” he said.

“Just a little bit.”

“Okay. Can I hug you?”

Pidge blinked, gave a nod, and let Hunk practically haul her into his lap and wrap his large arms around her shoulders. She let out a shuddering sigh and pressed her face into his chest and drew in the familiar comfort of his warm, reassuring bulk. He swayed slightly, and Pidge squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the massive tightness in her chest to loosen.

***

A whole two weeks passed, and Pidge’s phone remained unresponsive whenever she tried calling Olai. She tried so hard not to let herself get caught up in spiraling thoughts, but that was easier said than done.

At the very least, she was being kept busy. Between training, projects, and missions, she didn’t have too much time to ruminate. Case in point, she was in the middle of troubleshooting one of her bot prototypes when she heard the alarm signifying she needed to get to her lion. Barely ten minutes later, she and the others found themselves in the middle of skirmish with a small Galra patrol fleet that had managed to pick up on their presence. It took the paladins a few sweeps to clear away the worst of the drones, and soon, only three larger ships were left.

“We need to take down these ships and then clear out of here quickly,” Shiro barked over the coms lines. “Coran’s just intercepted a message that says a second fleet is approaching quickly. We need Voltron. Get in position.”

Pidge flew Green toward where Black and Shiro waited. It took a matter of seconds for the lions to assemble and for Pidge to slip easily into the Voltron mind space. She felt four presences flicker into existence at the edge of her mind, like dim street lights seen through a thick fog. Which wasn’t entirely normal. Usually, the others’ mental presence was a bright, hard thing. Lance and Hunk seemed especially dim; Lance almost flickered out of view completely if Pidge didn’t concentrate. She thought to say something but closed her mouth as soon as she had opened it. They were in the middle of a battle; now wasn’t the time to discuss the minutiae of Voltron’s connection.

“We’re not going to worry about finesse here,” Shiro was saying as Voltron flew toward the three ships. “Keith, form sword, try to incapacitate these ships in one go.”

“On it,” Keith replied, and Pidge felt the familiar ripple of something hot and sharp as Keith activated his bayard. Sword in hand, Voltron bore down on the first ship. The attack was so common as to almost be second nature, and Pidge tried to root herself in the familiarity. For a few seconds, the four other mental presences flared like someone had dumped gasoline on a fire. But just as quickly, they faded back into foggy obscurity. Pidge could pick up wisps of Shiro-flavored confusion and worry. He was noticing it too.

Voltron slashed at the ship’s hull then sped away. They turned around in time to see the slow, soundless explosion. Shrapnel zoomed toward them. Pidge automatically reached for the mental switch that would activate Voltron’s shield. But it was like her fingers fumbled and lost grip on the action, and the shield didn’t take. She recognized, dimly, that someone was shouting, but she was too caught up in blank confusion to register it.

“PIDGE!”

“I KNOW, I KNOW,” she burst out in reply, and she tried again, and this time the shield slammed into place just as the first chunks of burning metal smacked against it. Shiro grunted as he fought to keep Voltron steady.

“What was that?” Keith demanded, and through the mental connection, Pidge could feel white-hot billows of anger and fear. It made her want to shrink back into her seat.

“I don’t know!” she snarled back. “Get off my back; I got it to work!”

“Barely!”

“Enough.” Shiro’s voice cracked through the coms like a bull whip, and Keith and Pidge both fell silent. Pidge’s heart rammed against her ribcage, and her throat was growing tight and hard. “We’ve got two more ships,” Shiro continued. “We’re going to take them out. Now.”

“Yes,” Keith replied, and Pidge muttered something affirmative. Now the shame was rolling in, making her cheeks redden. What the hell was wrong with her? Activating the shield was one of the first things she had figured out how to do. It wasn’t supposed to be _hard_. Pidge felt a small nudge of sympathy and encouragement shaded with quiet nervousness from Hunk, but she didn’t have time to acknowledge it because Voltron was diving toward the two remaining ships. This time, she kept the mental switch for the shield firmly in mind while Keith drove the sword into the underbelly of a second ship and hauled the blade through the metal. And then, in a ripple of sudden thought, Shiro presented the mental image of Voltron ducking behind the last ship and using it as a shield. The idea hit the other four, and within half a second, Keith, Hunk, and Lance rippled back with their agreement and comprehension. Pidge’s reply came a few milliseconds later. It occurred to her that Shiro didn’t think she could form the shield in time. The pulse of seething frustration escaped her before she could help it.

But there was no time for the team to react to her emotion. The second ship was already disintegrating, and Shiro directed Voltron toward the final ship. They managed to dive behind the ship before the explosion reached them. After the initial shockwave passed them, Shiro gave Keith the mental green light, and Keith thrust his sword forward one last time. As soon as he withdrew the sword, Hunk and Lance set their thrusters to full power, and Voltron rocketed away from the final exploding ship.

Looking back, Pidge could acknowledge that it was a matter of bad luck. Sheer bad luck that a massive chunk of shrapnel clipped Voltron’s left foot, which was Yellow’s cockpit, which was Hunk. In a single, sickening, moment, Pidge got hit with a wave of Hunk’s confusion morphing into panic before his presence in the mind space blanked out completely. A second later, Pidge cried out in pain when she was hit with the twin concussive forces of Lance’s sheer terror and the sound of scream ripping through the coms line.

Shiro yelled something over the coms, trying to take back control of the situation, but Lance’s fear was like a tsunami. In the midst of that tsunami, a single, crystal clear image burst from him. A memory. Lance sitting across from Hunk on someone’s bed. Hunk had just come out of the cryo pod. They were kissing. Pidge could feel Lance’s memory of his relief and his bright joy and his sickening knowledge that if he lost Hunk, he might very well lose himself in the process. Then the memory dissolved back into Lance’s indecipherable panic, and a few heartbeats later, Voltron rattled apart. They didn’t stand a chance, not with one member fallen and another so overwhelmed with emotion. Pidge felt Green disengage from Black with a sickening jerk and then she was floating in space by herself.

Blinking hard, Pidge tried to find Yellow. Green nudged her attention down to where Blue had already grabbed Yellow by the neck and was trying to haul him in the general direction of the castle ship. Lance’s voice babbled Hunk’s name, begging him to answer. His panic was slightly fainter now that they weren’t properly forming Voltron, but the connection lingered enough to give Pidge a sick weight in her chest that was not entirely her own. As Pidge watched, Black swooped down to assist. Shiro’s presence was firm and focused, but Pidge could feel that even he was having a hard time reigning in his fear.

“Pidge, Keith,” Shiro barked over Lance’s pleading. “Cover us.”

“On it,” Pidge replied, and wheeled Green around to assess the collapsing ships. Shrapnel was still rocketing in every direction, so Pidge and Keith darted behind the other three, blasting apart larger chunks and rendering them essentially harmless. Pidge mentally latched onto Keith’s laser focus; for all the talk of him being a hothead, he was also better at setting aside his emotions to focus on a task. At the moment, Pidge was stupidly grateful for that.

Within ten minutes, they were approaching the castle ship. As soon as the others disappeared into the hangars, Pidge and Keith followed suit. Pidge eased Green into her hangar, and it was only after she pulled her hands from the controls that Pidge realized she was shaking. Moving jerkily, Pidge yanked her helmet from her head and stumbled out of Green’s cockpit. She sprinted from the hangar, down the hall, into Yellow’s hangar. The blood pounding in her ears felt like a plea to some unknown higher power that Hunk would be okay. Because he had to be okay because without him, Pidge didn’t know—

Yellow’s hangar was empty. Well, Yellow was there, crouched low and seeming subdued. But no one was there. No one was—why was no one—

“Pidge.”

Pidge whirled around to find Keith at the hangar’s doorway, hand slightly out. “They’re getting him to the med bay,” he said.

“So he’s—“

“He’s alive. He’ll be okay.”

“Oh.” Pidge’s entire body sagged, and she abruptly wanted to collapse to the floor. “Oh,” she said again. She ran both hands through her sweaty, matted hair and gripped the damp curls. “Shit,” she muttered.

“Yeah.” Keith hadn’t moved, and he was watching her too closely. At times like this, Pidge imagined she could see the Galra in him most clearly. The slightly too-still, catlike intensity.

“We should go to the med bay,” Pidge said.

Keith nodded but didn’t move. Neither did Pidge. “Are you okay?” Keith asked.

Pidge’s bark of laughter jangled discordantly against the hangar walls. “You’re asking _me_ that?”

“I can feel you rattling from here.”

Pidge slammed her eyes shut and inhaled sharply. “I screwed up with the shield, and I know it, and you’re angry about it and that’s fair but I—“

“I’m not angry.”

“Keith, we share a head hole, don’t try to lie to me.”

“Well, okay, I was angry, but now I’m mainly worried.”

Pidge glanced off to the side, knowing he was telling the truth. Keith flared into anger, yes, but he cooled quickly too. “You’ve got that ‘I’m the leader’ voice right now,” she said.

“Well?”

“It was all foggy,” Pidge said, hauling her gaze back to him. “Everything was far away. Filmy. Did you notice?”

“I felt like we were a little magnetized,” Keith said in a level voice. “But with the wrong poles. So we were being pushed apart ever so slightly.”

They both fell silent because, with the memory Lance had accidentally blasted outwards, it wasn’t hard to guess one reason for the disconnect. Quietly, Pidge wondered if her own disquiet over the last few weeks had a role to play, too.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Keith asked quietly, as if he’d picked up on a filament of her thoughts. Pidge stiffened then forced herself to relax.

“Accidentally, but yeah,” she said. She shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. It had seemed so innocent, so frivolous to agree to keep Lance and Hunk’s secret. But she should have guessed from her own experience that secrets of that size did little good. When it came to Voltron, secrets were like a pebble in a horse’s shoe. At some point, it was going to make the horse stumble.

“I think I suspected,” Keith said slowly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “But I didn’t know for sure.”

“Look, we really should get to the med bay and make sure everyone’s okay,” Pidge blurted. “Shiro’s going to want to see us once Hunk is settled in. And we need to make sure Lance is…you know.”

“Right,” Keith said, and his expression softened. “Yeah, good point.”

He half turned and waited for Pidge to jog across the hangar. When Pidge reached Keith, she reached out and slid her hand into his without thinking. She needed the warmth and heft of another person right now. Keith didn’t act surprised—once upon a time, this kind of physical contact would have startled him, but he had become accustomed to small things like this—and squeezed her hand lightly. Hand in hand, they made their way down the hall toward the med bay.

When they arrived, they found Allura and Coran bent over a holoscreen, talking in low voices. Lance was sitting on the steps in front of Hunk’s cryo pod with a blanket around his shoulders; Shiro was sitting next to him, hand on his knee. Everyone except Lance looked up when Keith and Pidge entered.

“Oh good,” Shiro breathed. “I was about to send someone to find out if you were okay.”

“We’re fine,” Pidge said. “Hunk?”

“Internal bleeding and several broken bones,” Allura spoke up without looking away from the holoscreen. “Concussion, too.”

“But all manageable,” Coran added.

Pidge nodded and looked to Hunk. He looked worse for the wear; there was an obvious bruise that had bloomed across his left cheekbone, though even as Pidge watched, she could see it fading.

“You three should get cleaned up,” Shiro said.

“What about you?” Keith asked.

“Need to discuss a few things with Allura and Coran,” Shiro said, nodding at the two Alteans. At his words, Lance entire body seemed to tighten. And now that Pidge was looking at him properly, she could see how _wrecked_ he looked. His eyes were red and puffy, his skin sallow. Lance caught her eyes, and his gaze skidded away almost immediately.

“Hey Lance?” Pidge said. She dropped Keith’s hand to step forward. “You should shower at least.” It was such a common phrase among them. ‘You look terrible; you should shower.’ ‘You should shower; you’ll feel better.’ Pidge had no idea how they’d formed the collective conviction that standing under hot, spraying water fixed anything. And yet they all kept saying it.

“You should, Lance,” Shiro said in a gentle voice. Almost too gentle. “We won’t leave Hunk alone. We’ll wait until you come back.”

Lance blinked up at Shiro, glassy-eyed. Something in Shiro’s expression must have swayed him because he slowly stood. Lance slipped the blanket from his shoulders and folded it in neat, practiced motions. He handed the blanket to Shiro, glanced back at Hunk, then padded across the med bay to where Pidge and Keith waited. Pidge settled a hand on the small of his back as she led him down the hall, and Keith stayed close to Lance’s other side.

Together, without speaking a word, they went to the nearest set of communal showers. They undressed carelessly in the main room—there had been too many instances of people walking in one each other for it to matter anymore—and took their own stalls. Pidge stood with her forehead against the cool wall and watched the water swirl around her pale, knobby feet and into the drain. She realized that she still felt faintly foggy and rattled, off-center, sickly somehow.

From the next stall over, she could hear Lance crying softly.


	5. Chapter 5

The next day and a half passed in a pale blur. Pidge spent most of it wrapped in a blanket and leaning against Lance in front of Hunk’s pod. Keith and Shiro always remained nearby. When Allura and Coran weren’t busy with tasks outside of the med bay, they too stayed in the room. No one breathed a word about what they’d seen from Lance; Pidge supposed that it wouldn’t seem right, not without Hunk present.

This close to Lance, she could feel the occasional, fine tremors run through him, like aftershocks. She wanted to say something comforting, but the words always got lodged somewhere in her throat, so she stayed quiet and pressed herself against him even harder, as if to try to assure him that however things turned out, she would support him.

Neither Shiro nor Allura gave any indication of what they were thinking, whether they were going to do the things Lance had feared. Once, when Pidge was watching Shiro to try and find some hint, he caught her eye and gave her a wan smile before dropping his eyes again. Pidge had no idea how to interpret that.

The waiting was so still and stiff and silent that when Hunk’s cryo pod did finally release him, it was like an explosion. Lance reacted first, lunging to a stand and almost sending Pidge toppling. She scrambled to her feet along with Keith and Shiro, and together the four of them reached out to catch Hunk as he stumbled forward while Allura and Coran hovered nearby.

There was a lot of indiscriminate babble as everyone manhandled Hunk into a sit, with people trying to find an extra blanket and asking Hunk if he was okay and asking if he was thirsty and saying they swore there was a water pack in here at one point, give them a second, they just needed to find it. Hunk blinked blearily through most of it, which was normal for someone just out of a cryopod, but it wasn’t until he gave a low cough and said he felt fine that Pidge’s chest finally began to relax.

“You jerk,” she said affectionately, sneaking in from the side to wrap her arms around his neck. “You had us all worried for a hot minute.”

“Yeah?” Hunk turned slightly to eye her. “You guys might need to recap, actually. I don’t remember much after I was hit.” There followed a long, studied silence in which no one looked at Lance, and Lance stared very hard a piece of flooring near his feet. Hunk, even in his befuddled state, picked up on it. His expression fell, and he gently disengaged from Pidge. “What?” he demanded. “What happened? Is Yellow—“

“Fine,” Shiro hurried to assure him. “He’s fine. Just the usual wear and tear; we can take care of repairs once you’re feeling up to it.”

“Then what?” Hunk insisted. “Come on, you guys are acting weird.”

Lance yanked his head up and said in a flat voice, “They know.”

Hunk jerked his head to look at him. The silence was a crawling, sharp thing, and Pidge had to wrap her arms around her torso because she was starting to feel mildly sick from the sheer tension.

“Oh,” Hunk finally said. His voice was oddly colorless. “Right.”

“We can discuss it later,” Shiro said. “First, Hunk, you should get some fluids in you. Some food, if you’re up to it.”

“I—“ Hunk squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head slightly. “God, look, you’re going to have to tell us if we’re in trouble first, okay?”

Everyone’s head swiveled toward Shiro, who tilted his head. “I don’t know if trouble is the right word,” he said. “Though I do think there’s an important lesson to be learned here, and we need to talk about it. But like I said, we should probably wait until you’re feeling better.”

“Oh come on,” Lance snapped. The fear and confusion in his voice was visceral. “Just come out and say it, would you?”

“I—“ Shiro blinked. “Sorry?”

“We’re in trouble because teammates aren’t supposed to be involved with each other!” Lance burst out. Shiro stared at Lance, the furrow in his brow growing deeper. He glanced back at Allura, who was standing a few paces away and watching Lance intently. Shiro faced forward again.

“That’s…no,” he said. Lance and Hunk stared at Shiro like they were having trouble understanding him. “I mean,” Shiro continued. “Like I said, we do need to discuss some things. Because it’s clear that you two keeping a secret like that was hurting Voltron. And we really can’t have that, not with stakes are as high as they are. I would think you’d know better.” He shook his head. “The distrust is the main problem.”

“But back at home—“ Hunk started.

“Hunk, we’re not home,” Shiro said gently. He let out a sudden, pained laugh. “God, did you think we’d—that would be cruel. Why would anyone be mad that you two are together? I’d think that’s a good thing.”

Lance’s mouth was opening and closing, and Pidge might have thought to tease him for it if he didn’t look so vulnerable. Hunk looked a bit more composed, though there was a suspicious wetness to his eyes. When Pidge couldn’t take it anymore, she leaned forward and gently bumped Lance’s arm with her fist.

“Hate to say it,” she murmured. “But I definitely told you so.”

Lance turned to look at her, eyes wide, but before he had a chance to scrape up a response, Hunk suddenly lunged forward to tackle Lance in a bear hug. Lance disappeared under Hunk, though Pidge could hear a muffled sound that might have been laughter and might have been a sob. Pidge held herself back for a handful of seconds before she launched forward to try and wrap her arms around as much of them as her short arms would allow. So, sue her. They were her friends, and they were happy, and that made her happy, and they could be gross and private somewhere else, later on. Keith and Shiro joined the hug a moment later, and Pidge thought she could feel Coran and Allura follow suit. But for the moment she just focused on holding as tightly to Lance and Hunk as she could.

***

The next day, Shiro, Lance, and Hunk went into one of the castle ship’s many empty meeting rooms and didn’t emerge for almost an hour. If Pidge never found out exactly how that conversation went, it wasn’t for lack of effort.

“Shiro’s going to be angry if he finds out you’re eavesdropping,” Keith told Pidge blandly as she hunched over her laptop and squinted at readouts from her spy bot. She and Keith were crammed together in an alcove down the hall from the meeting room, and while her spy bot’s coordinates indicated that it had wriggled its way into the room, nothing else was working.

“All we have to do is make sure he doesn’t find out,” Pidge replied. She lifted her head and jabbed a finger at Keith. “So don’t get any ideas, Kogane.”

Keith’s eyebrows twitched up, but he otherwise didn’t react, opting instead to scoot closer to see her screen better. “You said you’d have a video feed,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And an audio feed.”

“ _Yes_.” Keith glanced sidelong at Pidge, who huffed irritably and abruptly pulled away from the laptop screen to slump against the wall. “This is a little bit of a prototype,” she admitted.

“Eh.” Keith shrugged. “Probably for the better. You’ll get it to work eventually.”

Pidge sighed and keyed in a command for the bot to return to her. Hopefully, it wouldn’t draw Shiro’s attention on the way out.

“Nothing I do works anymore,” she lamented.

“That’s not true,” Keith countered, frowning. “You got the robo gladiator to run capoeira perfectly. And what about that new modification you installed on Black the other day?”

Pidge shrugged absently then lifted her head as a faint clicking heralded the tiny spy bot’s arrival. It scuttled along the floor on its six legs and popped itself into the small bag Pidge had procured as its temporary home while she worked on it. There was a tiny whirring sound as if powered down, then silence. Pidge heaved a sigh and leaned over her laptop again.

“Well, I guess we might as well do something useful while they talk,” she said. “Wanna be my rubber duck while I try to troubleshoot this little guy?”

“I can probably manage that,” Keith agreed.

Pidge was in the middle of wrangling the video feed issue when the door down the hall clacked open and someone’s voice drifted toward them. Pidge cut herself off as Keith leaned forward to peer down the hall.

“We can see you,” Hunk’s voice said.

“We’re not trying to hide,” Keith replied. He levered himself to a stand and reached out a hand to help Pidge up. “If we were, we’d pick somewhere way better.”

“Naturally,” Shiro said as he and the others came down the hall to meet them. He sounded amused. “By the way, I think we might need an exterminator. I saw a _really_ weird bug in there.”

“Uh. Heh.” Pidge adjusted her glasses and gave a half smile. “Listen, if this is any consolation, it didn’t work.”

Shiro smirked. “Yeah, Hunk told us you were still in the early stages with that thing. He guessed we didn’t need to worry about it.”

“Wow, Hunk. Your confidence is stunning,” Pidge said.

Hunk splayed his hands. “Was I wrong?” Pidge rolled her eyes, but she let it go.

“Anyway,” Shiro said. “We’re moving on to the team meeting. I want everyone in the common room in five minutes.”

“If we’re getting collectively shamed, I want to point out that I didn’t do anything,” Keith said.

Shiro gave him a dry look before starting down the hall. Pidge turned to Lance and Hunk.

“So how bad was it?” she asked.

“Eh?” Hunk wiggled a hand. “I mean, he didn’t really _yell_ at us.”

“He pulled the ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ shtick,” Lance said. “And then made us come up with an SOP for making sure we don’t screw up Voltron just because we’re fighting or one of us gets hurt and the other freaks out.” Lance grimaced. “And I couldn’t even argue against the need for that.”

“Ah.” Keith winced. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, well.” Lance heaved a shrug and started walking after Shiro. “Let’s just get this over with. I need to moisturize and then take a nap with my hot boyfriend.” He looked back and shot an extremely cheesy wink at Hunk. Hunk’s face colored even as his eyes brightened, and Pidge’s lips quirked up on one side despite herself.

***

In the end, the team meeting wasn’t half as had as Pidge had expected. Mostly it was about the importance of honesty among the five of them, about how vital it was that they maintain a strong connection so they could continue to do their job, and about how if anything like this happened again, Shiro wanted them to be upfront with him about it.

“Aren’t I a little bit to blame for what happened?” Pidge asked at one point. “I mean, I kept it a secret too.”

“Well.” Shiro tilted his head. “Listen, I’ve been in your situation before, Pidge. It wasn’t entirely your secret to tell, was it?”

Pidge shrugged. “Guess not,” she allowed.

And that seemed to be the extent of the discussion about her involvement. Which, frankly, didn’t sit well with Pidge, but she wasn’t sure why or how to voice it. She opted to wait until the meeting ended, until after Keith had gone to continue testing the gladiator’s new settings and Lance and Hunk hurried off with their hands intertwined. Pidge remained perched on the couch as Shiro stood and rolled his neck like he was trying to dispel some heavy weight.

“You okay?” he asked when he realized Pidge hadn’t moved.

Pidge hummed noncommittally, still watching the doorway where Hunk and Lance had gone. “They’re gonna be insufferable for the next few weeks, aren’t they?”

“It’ll be the endearing kind of insufferable,” Shiro said, and his tone was blatantly fond. “They make a good couple, and I’m really happy for them. I just wish it could have come out less…traumatically.”

Pidge huffed a laugh. “I guess so. Have I told you I was convinced they were dating for a solid two weeks back at the Garrison?”

“Not surprised.” Shiro placed his hands on his hips and eyed Pidge. “So. What’s up?”

Pidge tangled her hands in her lap and studied her fingernails, pale and ragged at their edges from her bad habit of gnawing them when she was nervous. “I feel like you let me off easy,” she said.

Shiro huffed and shook his head. “Pidge, you were in a little bit of a bind,” he reminded her. “If you’d told me, you know it would have made Lance angry. And you also didn’t know how Allura and I would react. You did the best you could.”

“Yeah, okay, but.” Pidge waved her hands, irritated. “Shiro, the shield didn’t work. Voltron’s shield—which I _like_ to think is a pretty important part of the whole ensemble even if it’s not as flashy as Keith’s sword—it completely escaped me.”

She could practically feel Shiro grow solemn. “That was…not great,” he admitted. “Almost as scary as Hunk getting hit. You could probably feel me panicking.”

“Not really. My own panic was drowning it all out.” Pidge grunted. “That and how mad Keith was at me.”

“Pidge—”

“Well, he should be!” Pidge looked up at Shiro, mouth pulled into a grimace. “What if that happens again?”

Shiro studied her for a long moment then slowly walked over and settled into a sit on the ground at her feet, arms wrapped around loosely crossed legs, hands clasped. “Well, for one, we’re going to do a lot of practice runs with Voltron and with the mind melding exercises,” he said. “We’re going to make sure it was just a fluke. And two, you’re not keeping a secret from us anymore; we shouldn’t technically have the same problems.” Pidge remained silent. “Unless there’s something else you need to tell me?”

“No. Yes? No. Maybe.” Pidge bent over and braced her forehead against the heels of her hands. “It’s not even a secret, it’s just—“ She cut herself off, but Shiro was patient. Pidge lifted her head. “I’ve been, uh, distracted recently.”

“Yes,” Shiro said, his voice carefully flat. Pidge winced.

“You can tell.”

“I’ve…picked up on some things.”

“Right.” Pidge jammed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, which was starting to grow damp with sweat. “And I’m wondering if this…distraction was getting in the way of Voltron, too. And maybe that’s why the shield slipped.”

“The distraction being this girl you met.”

“Augh.” Pidge bent over again and this time fully buried her face in her hands.

“What?”

“It sounds _terrible_ when you say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m some…some swooning, lovesick idiot who can’t get her shit together because of a girl.”

Shiro was silent for a beat. “ _Are_ you lovesick?”

“No!” Pidge popped her head back up, scowling. “I’m just worrying about Olai because something’s wrong with our coms and we haven’t been able to talk for two weeks and, despite what Hunk says, I don’t actually know if it’s because she hates me or because her thing is just broken or because something awful has happened or—“ She stopped abruptly, eyes wide. “Shit. I sound like a lovesick idiot.”

“I wouldn’t use those terms exactly,” Shiro said, and if he thought he was masking his amusement, he was wrong. Pidge’s expression must have been slightly pitiful because Shiro laughed and reached out to rub her upper arm. “It sounds like a crush, kiddo,” he said warmly. “Not the end of the world.” Pidge gazed balefully at him, and Shiro tilted his head. “What?”

Pidge shrugged. “You know me,” she said dully. “I don’t like losing control of things, least of all my own feelings. It sucks. I also don’t like not knowing what I’m doing. That also sucks. So this whole situation is—“ She splayed her hands to try and get the emotion across.

“It sucks,” Shiro guessed.

“Astute as ever.”

Shiro quirked a grin at her and leaned against the couch. “I mean, I can’t claim not to understand,” he said. “Relationships can be a roller coaster. Especially if you haven’t had much experience.”

“See, and that’s the other thing,” Pidge burst out. “Olai would be my first actual relationship. So why do I have to go through this in _outer space_? With someone who’s not even the same _species_ as me? I mean, it’s not like I inherently have a problem with the idea of, uh, dating someone who isn’t my species. But there’s got to be difficulties that I’m not going to be able to imagine until they come up. Cultural and biological and all that. It would be _hard_. Really _hard_. It would be so, so easy to screw everything up, and what if I hurt her, or she hurts me, or—“ Pidge blinked hard; she could feel her eyes growing suspiciously heavy. “And on top of that, I’m constantly flying around the universe. We’d always be at least a couple lightyears apart, and sure, plenty of couples have done long-distance relationships, but come on. One bad glitch in our coms and we can’t _talk_. At _all_. And what if the Galra threaten her planet to make us comply to something? What if I die, and there’s no way to tell her—“

“Pidge,” Shiro cut in. “You’re not dying.”

Pidge blinked at him. “Well duh, we’re all trying to avoid that particular outcome, but get real.” Shiro’s expression flinched, and Pidge deflated. “God, I mean. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, I just mean—“

“Yeah.” Shiro reached up and gripped Pidge’s knee. “I know.” Pidge’s expression screwed up and she unthinkingly reached out to grab his hand. “I just,” she said in a small voice. “I feel like I had to spend all this extra time and emotional energy being trans. And then even more time and energy working through the fact that I only like girls. So now I feel like I'm behind schedule. And, I dunno, I was finally figuring out how I might possibly turn a crush into an actual _thing_.

“There was this girl in my neighborhood, see. I—she’s insanely good at biology stuff. Can name every species of plant and bird, no sweat. She’s incredible. And I carried such a torch for her for at least a year, and I was figuring out how I could find out if she likes girls and how maybe I could ask her to kiss me. And then.” Pidge inhaled shakily. “Well, then Kerberos went missing. And I had way bigger things to worry about. And I don’t regret my choices, but sometimes I feel…bitter that I missed my chance to do a normal teenage thing like kiss the girl next door.”

Shiro was silent, his thumb thoughtfully stroking her knee. “What I’m hearing,” he finally said. “Is that I ruined your chances with this girl.”

Pidge snorted in surprise and pulled her hand from Shiro’s. “Idiot, no. It’s the Galra’s fault. One more item on their list of atrocities.” Shiro huffed a laugh, but his expression wasn’t as light as it had been before. Pidge’s gut twisted at that; she hadn’t meant to ruin Shiro’s mood. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m dumping on you.”

“You’re not,” Shiro assured her. “That’s what we’re all here for. To help each other through things like this.”

“It’s so _petty_ though.”

“It’s not,” Shiro said solemnly. “Your emotions are your emotions. There’s not good dismissing them or acting like they’re not worth your time. As a paladin of Voltron, you should know that.”

“I guess,” Pidge allowed. She picked thoughtlessly at a loose thread on her shorts. “I guess in a way you had a point back on Uhna. This situation isn’t normal for someone my age. And depending on how long we’re out here, most of my teenage years aren’t going to be normal. And my twenties—? Well, anyway, my point is that I’m spending the next few years on a space ship with four human guys, one alien guy, and one alien girl who—yeah, Allura’s awesome, but that’s not happening. So, if I’m intent on doing something like dating, my options are going to be limited and complicated and scary and—and then I look over, and Lance and Hunk got stranded in space with each other and it looks so _easy_ for them, and I get jealous even though I shouldn’t.” Pidge screwed up her face. “I probably shouldn’t even be thinking about dating. It might distract me from finding Matt and dad. Might distract me from my job with you guys, and I can’t do that.”

“I don’t think it’s an either-or situation,” Shiro said. “And what’s that phrase? The heart wants what it wants. If you and Olai hit it off, if there was a spark that you want to nurture, then there’s no shame to that. Honestly, if she makes you happy and can support you emotionally, then it might make you better at your job.”

Pidge considered this before she rested her elbow on her thigh and perched her chin in one hand. “Shiro,” she said thoughtfully. “Are you actually a helpless romantic and I’m just now finding out?”

Shiro jerked his head back slightly, and his face flushed faint pink under his scar. Pidge found herself grinning, and Shiro broke down and grinned back.

“Possibly,” he allowed. “But don’t tell anyone; it would ruin the veneer of manly coolness I’ve been cultivating.”

Pidge blew a raspberry. “Buddy, that ship sailed a looong time ago,” she said.

“Ah well,” Shiro said, but he was still grinning. After a pause, he shifted from the floor to the couch beside Pidge and tucked her into his side with one arm. She leaned against him with a rushing exhale. “I’ll talk to Allura and Coran,” Shiro said in a low voice. “Ask them if we can’t find time for a quick trip back to Uhna.”

Pidge jerked back, eyes wide. “Shiro, we can’t do _that_ ,” she protested.

“Why not? It’s our responsibility to make sure Uhna is doing all right,” Shiro said. “And if there happens to be enough time to go planet side and, say, visit a few people and fix a coms device, then all the better.”

“Shiro.”

“Unless you don’t want to do that.”

Pidge glared at him but melted into a frustrated groan within a few seconds. “I do,” she mumbled then fell into Shiro’s side again, burying her face in his shoulder so he wouldn’t see how red her face was becoming. She could feel him laugh and then press his lips into her hair.

“It’ll be fine, Katie,” he told her. “I promise.”


	6. Chapter 6

Several days later, Pidge sat in the training room’s observation deck with Allura. They were spending that morning running simulations. Below them, Shiro, Hunk, Lance and Keith took turns going through a virtual obstacle course in pairs. Pidge was waiting for her turn to be cycled in. She was also supposed to be watching the teams from above so she could provide feedback later, but she hadn’t been in a very attentive mood for the last few days.

“Pidge?”

“What?” Pidge lifted her head and found Allura watching her.

“I said, did you see how Shiro accounted for the long-range attack with his short-range weapon? You can use the same maneuver.”

“I saw.” Allura’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m just thinking,” Pidge protested.

“About?”

“My malka egg,” Pidge said, only half lying. “It’s not doing anything. I’m afraid it’s dead.”

“It’s not dead,” Allura assured her. She returned to watching the paladins, one hand absently typing notes into a holoscreen. “I’ve felt its quintessence. The embryo is very much alive.”

“Well…cool. I just suck at nurturing, then.”

Allura glanced over. Pidge half expected her to ask Pidge to pay attention to the task at hand instead of lamenting over her egg. Instead, she leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms.

“You’ve been in a mood,” she stated.

“Uh.”

“Not a bad mood, necessarily,” Allura continued. “But you’re distracted. Off-center.”

“Fine. Yeah, I am.” Pidge looked at Allura sidelong. “Have you been talking to Shiro?”

Allura hesitated. “He…let me know that you’re, quote, ‘going through some teenager things.’” She paused. “If you wanted to talk about it…”

“Oh geeze,” Pidge said, grinning slightly. “You know exactly what’s going on.”

Allura straightened and tilted her head conspiratorially. “It’s a small crew,” she said. “And the mice are terrible gossips.”

“Aw. I bet it’s a real chore to have a personal gossip mill.”

Allura laughed lightly, and for a moment Pidge recalled that little lurch she’d gotten when Allura had first emerged from the cryo pods, all cloudy hair and dark skin and unreal blue eyes. Pidge hadn’t been lying to Shiro; Allura was her friend and commander and nothing else. But there had been a moment in the very beginning. Pidge could admit that to herself.

“All right, fine,” Pidge said, pulling her legs up so she could sit cross-legged in her chair. “I’m bumming because there’s a girl I really like, and I think she likes me, and we’re tragically separated by circumstance and distance.”

“Well, if nothing else, that’s the perfect recipe for a good romantic holoplay. You mean Olai, correct?”

“Obviously.”

Allura sighed and uncrossed her arms. “I shouldn’t joke, really. Your situation is difficult.” Any humor from before had abruptly left her voice. “If I could give you indefinite leave to spend time with her, I would. And if I felt safe allowing a young civilian to travel with us, I would do that too.”

“But life on this ship is dangerous, and we have work to do,” Pidge said, smiling colorlessly. “I know.”

Allura nodded, but she didn’t seem satisfied. She inhaled and said, “I was once in love with a young woman who I couldn’t be with either.”

Pidge blinked. “You’re gay?” she asked without thinking.

“Gay means interested in people of the same gender, yes?” Allura said. “At least, Keith said that’s what it means.”

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s not a concept on Altea?”

“It’s redundant,” Allura said, shrugging. “Alteans are shapeshifters, remember? We can change our bodies as easily as thinking. Gender and sexuality are…nebulous. Although, we certainly accept that other species take a harder approach to those concepts.”

“Huh.” Pidge tilted her head. “That’s actually really cool. Would have made my life easier if I’d been Altean, for sure. But, okay, so who was this woman?”

“A Galra,” Allura said. Her expression hovered somewhere between fond and saddened. Pidge suddenly held herself very still, sensing that she was hearing something Allura hadn’t told the other paladins. “Growing up, I spent nearly as much time among Galra as I did with Alteans,” Allura said. “Our people were very close. In the castle ship, we had a Galra as our head engineer, and he had a daughter.” Allura’s lips curled up. “Her name was Raiza. I’d know her since we were children, and we became good friends as adolescents. We got into so much trouble. My father used to call us the twin terrors.” Allura’s eyes lingered in the holoscreens as she gave a soft laugh. “She was the first person I truly loved in that way, and I think I was hers. We were so young and fumbling. No idea what we were doing. But we cared deeply for one another, and looking back, it was a soft, sweet first love to have.” She paused; Pidge didn’t dare speak. “But then, of course, came the schism between the Alteans and the Galra. And all Galra were forced from our castle. And that included Raiza.” Allura tilted her head and smiled sadly. “It was a confusing time for me. I lost Raiza and so many other friends. But Zarkon had also betrayed us, and the Galra were suddenly our enemies. I grew to resent, even hate the Galra. But I could never quite extend that hatred to Raiza. To the memory of her. She was my reminder of a happier time; I couldn’t bring myself to sully that with bad feeling.”

“You never saw her again?”

“No. But…well, I’ve managed to find her in old Galra census records. It’s data you intercepted, actually. I found that Raiza had a wife and three children. Many grandchildren. She worked as an architect. I think she lived a happy life. And I’m very, very glad for that.”

The room fell silent except for the equipment’s humming.

“In any case.” Allura turned to look at Pidge properly. “The good news is that you and Olai don’t have nearly the same obstacles.”

“Allura.” Pidge stopped, unsure what the proper response could be. “I’m sorry you couldn’t be with her.”

“I am too. But I’m glad I had my time with her.” Allura smiled. “I hope your first experience, whether it’s with Olai or someone else, is just as fulfilling. Just as kind.”

“Me too,” Pidge murmured. She frowned. “So…maybe this is too personal. But was that the only relationship you’ve had?”

“No. The schism happened about five planetary rotations before I was put into cryosleep. In that time, I had a few more partners. But those relationships were different from what I had with Raiza. We were immersed in war, remember; it lent everything a frantic edge. Nothing felt certain.” Allura sighed. “And since I’ve come out of cryosleep, things like that have felt…almost frivolous. Who knows, though? I might meet someone; I’m open to the possibility.”

“Well,” Pidge said, smiling quietly. “I’ll point any cute aliens in your direction.”

“Excellent.” Allura grinned. “Let me know if you want me to return the favor.”

“Um. I think I need to figure out this…whatever it is with Olai first.” Pidge huffed. “Who am I kidding though? It probably won’t go anywhere. I feel like even if everything lined up logistically, I’ll still have no idea what I’m doing and ruin everything.”

“That’s how many people feel,” Allura assured her. “But if you ever want to talk about things you’re worried or confused about, I’ll always be happy to help.” Her eyes sparked mischievously. “And I can help you find more outfits like that green suit. You looked very becoming in it.”

“Thanks.” Pidge flushed faintly. “Frankly, I trust your advice more than these guys’.” Pidge jabbed at the four on the training floor.

“Well, if you want truly good advice on the art of wooing and romance, ask Coran.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh yes,” Allura said, her voice becoming wry. “Coran had a bit of a reputation back in the day. Has he ever told you about the time he accidentally became engaged to two princes and a viceroy in the space of five vargas?”

Pidge stared. “You’re not telling me that’s true.”

“My father was there; he corroborated it.”

Pidge burst into bright, warm laughter. A moment later, Allura joined in.

***

A few days later, they arrived on a planet that was on the smaller side, but which was verdant and cool. Sentient beings lived there, though their largest civilization was miles away from where the castle ship had landed. Earlier in the day, they had all hopped into one of the transport pods and flown to the closest city to pick up supplies and keep an ear to the ground as to the Galra movements. As Coran liked to say, there were few better places to find information than a marketplace.

They had returned well over an hour ago, but Pidge had lingered outside to take advantage of the weather. She found a nearby grassy hill surrounded by several trees, and she watched bruised purple clouds drift across a sky quickly sinking into twilight. Something must have been blooming nearby because the air smelled faintly floral. It felt so much like an early spring day on Earth, down to the green dampness to the air, that it made Pidge’s chest ache.

She’d brought her malka egg with her in an attempt to coax it into hatching. She let it sit in her lap, and every so often she glanced down. But the shell remained smooth and unblemished.

The sun—larger and redder than the one from home—had just disappeared behind the horizon when Pidge heard footsteps in the grass behind her. She twisted around and found Lance approaching with a blanket slung over one shoulder.

“Hey,” he called out. “Did you want to keep meditating by yourself, or is it okay if we join you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Pidge called back. “Who’s we?”

“Me and Hunk for now,” Lance said. He drew even with Pidge and shook out the blanket. He struggled with it billowing in the wind before he could settle it onto the ground. “Shiro and Allura are still discussing training things, but they said they’d like to come out when they’re done. Keith and Coran might be interested in joining too, eventually.” Lance straightened a rumpled corner of the blanket before he placed his hands on his hips and grinned down at Pidge. “Hunk’s getting some things together; we’re gonna eat dinner picnic style.”

“Cool,” Pidge said, scooting over to settle on the blanket. It was thick and white, and the grass snapped and whispered underneath it whenever she moved. Lance remained standing, his gaze fixed on the dim sky. The stars had started to come out: brilliant and thick as dust and completely unfamiliar.

“This was a good pick for a supply run,” Lance observed distantly. “It’s almost like home.”

“It smells like springtime,” Pidge replied. Lance exhaled and glanced down at her.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “That your egg? Does it like this place too?”

“Don’t think so,” Pidge said, poking at the malka egg. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Well,” Lance said, and he finally settled into a sit beside her. “Still got lots of planets to try.”

“Mm,” Pidge hummed. They fell silent after that, choosing instead to watch the sky grow choked on stars. It almost didn’t matter that they lived in space and saw stars all the time; that didn’t make it any less breathtaking.

“Pidge?” Lance said.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think I ever…uh, thank slash apologized for making you—“

“You didn’t make me do anything,” Pidge interrupted.

Lance rolled his eyes. “I asked you to keep it a secret, and you did, and thanks. But also, I’m sorry for asking you in the first place. Hunk and I have talked a lot about this, and I think I was, uh, sort of in the wrong.”

“I mean.” Pidge shrugged, wrinkling her nose. “I understood why you were worried.”

“I don’t,” Lance muttered, rubbing hard at the back of his head with a scowl. “I was being paranoid. As if Shiro would raise a stink about—I mean, you’ve seen him the last week, right?”

“He’s very happy for you two,” Pidge said, grinning.

“More like he’s already picked out the color scheme for our wedding,” Lance grumbled. “I swear, he’s worse than my mom.”

“Oh, are we planning the wedding already?” Pidge asked, still grinning. “Because I call being Hunk’s best woman. Science nerds; the two lefties; it’s a sacred bond. Can’t possibly break that.”

“Rude.”

“No, no, and then I’ll plan your stag party.” Pidge splayed her hands. “Yes?”

Lance pursed his lips and pretended to consider it. “Yeah, okay, I’ll take it.” He held out a hand with his pinkie extended. Pidge looked at him askance. “Don’t gimme that look,” Lance said. “We’ve got to make this binding.” Pidge laughed and reached out to hook her pinkie around Lance’s. “Good,” he said, and with a gusting sigh, leaned back until he was reclined on the blanket, propped up by his elbows. A fresh breeze blew through, ruffling their hair and clothes and the edges of the blanket. The ambient light from the castle ship was just enough to cast everything in faint blue.

Pidge continued to watch Lance until he glanced at her. “What?”

“You think you’re going to marry him?”

“Ah.” Lance grinned and coughed out a laugh. “C’mon, Pidge-podge, we’ve been dating for a month or something.”

“And you’ve been best friends for, what, three years?” Pidge pointed out.

“Sure.”

“And you’re so into him, it’s a little ridiculous.” Lance gave her a flat look, but that didn’t smother the way his eyes were warm and bright. “Well?” Pidge needled, encouraged. “Am I lying?”

“No,” Lance said around another cough. “Gremlin.” He sighed and flopped fully onto his back. He splayed his hands on his stomach and gazed at the sky. “It was when he stress baked six dozen chocolate chip cookies before our very first midterm back in the first year,” he said. “It was three full days of us quizzing each other and trying not to freak ourselves out even worse. That’s when I knew I was completely in the deep end.”

“Oh god,” Pidge laughed. “That’s adorable.”

“Sure, yuk it up.” Lance propped himself up again on one arm and pointed at her. “Listen, if there’s anyone who should be careful about teasing me about my ridiculous love life, it’s you, chica.”

Pidge sobered, but only slightly. “Joke’s on you,” she said. “I don’t even have a love life.”

“Sure you do,” Lance said, flopping bonelessly to the ground again. “It’s in progress.”

Pidge brought her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. “Can’t even talk to her,” she said, squinting into the sky. “So that’s going nowhere fast. I mean, Allura told me she’s talked to the Uhnite parliament, and there’s no coup or Galra fleet there. And she’s managed to get hold of Tasa, and Tasa reports Olai is alive and working on her studies like always. So Olai is okay, broadly speaking. But I don’t know anything more specific than that.”

“Eh.” Lance waved a hand. “Wouldn’t give up on it just yet.”

Pidge gave a noncommittal shrug and turned her attention to the sky again to try and get her mind off Olai. Something about the largeness soothed her.

Neither Lance nor Pidge spoke for a long time, each lost in their own thoughts. It was only when they heard faint voices growing louder that they turned and found the rest of the team coming toward them from the castle. Within a few minutes, the formerly quiet scene had become loud with people chatting, laughing, spreading out extra blankets, setting up Altean lanterns to provide light, uncovering dishes of food and plates and utensils. Within a few dobashes, Pidge found herself sitting cross legged between Keith and Allura, a plate of almost-pasta salad in front of her. The mice had hitched a ride with them, and Chuchule took up a position on Pidge’s knee to receive a steady supply of pasta. As she ate, the conversation drifted from needed upkeep for the lions and castle to an animated discussion of the difference between Altean and Earth ideas of entertainment.

Once the leftovers had been packed and the last of the dessert had been picked over, Pidge’s head was resting on Allura’s upper arm and she was halfway toward sleep. But she couldn’t bring herself to head back to the castle; the night air was too nice, the sky too beautiful, the company too good. As it was, though, it took her a couple seconds to realize someone was saying her name, and only then after Allura lightly jostled her head.

“Mm, sorry,” Pidge slurred, blinking around at the loose circle. “What?”

“I was saying I have something for you,” Hunk said. He was grinning like crazy, and Lance was too, and everyone else was watching her a little too expectantly. Pidge lifted her head from Allura’s arm and squinted.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked.

“Oh, c’mon, relax,” Lance ordered. “It’s a good thing.” Hunk, meanwhile, was fishing something from his pocket. When Pidge could get a good look, she realized it was small and wrapped in a white kerchief.

“Here,” Hunk said, leaning forward to pass the item to Pidge. “Happy early birthday. Or belated birthday? Late Christmas present?”

“I’m Jewish, but I take your meaning,” Pidge said. She looked down at the wrapped item in her hand. It felt small and dense. When she pulled away the kerchief, she found an item that looked like an Earth phone built by someone using Altean tech and—

“Wait.” Pidge jerked her head up and stared at Hunk. “You didn’t…”

Hunk shrugged and grinned. “You’re going to need to fine tune my coding work,” he said. “And full disclosure, I definitely had to sneak into your room and steal your phone to copy your modifications.”

“Lance and I helped with that,” Keith said. He was grinning quietly, looking inordinately pleased.

“Anyway, point being, that’s a new and improved coms device,” Lance said. “One that should have a way better intergalactic signal than your old Earth phone.”

“Hunk and I cobbled together a few Altean devices,” Coran added. “And added our own touches. Should be impervious to the worst of strange celestial events.”

“I…” Pidge was intently aware that her eyes were prickling and briefly wiped her forearm across her eyes. “Wow, guys. This is incredible. Once I see Olai again, we can totally work with this.“

“Actually,” Shiro said. “You won’t need to wait that long.”

“Sorry?” Pidge blinked.

“Well,” Allura said. “I do have my own coms line with Uhna. Much stronger and more stable than your and Olai’s line; no offense meant.”

“Yeah, but that’s to the parliament,” Pidge said blankly. “That’s an official government line.”

“Of course, but I was able to ask for some favors,” Allura said. “Tasa spends enough time in the parliament building; it certainly wasn’t impossible to get in contact with her, as you know.”

“And if the leader of Voltron and the princess of Altea ask that the coms line be given to a certain student for, say, a varga or so,” Shiro added. “It turns out government officials are willing to comply.”

“Olai didn’t even need a varga,” Hunk said proudly. “Once we figured out what was wrong with her coms device, we had it fixed in, like, twenty minutes.”

“You _talked_ to her?” Pidge asked, straightening abruptly.

“Okay, see, this is how I said you’d react,” Lance said.

“Pidge, everything on that coms line is recorded,” Coran said. “And the Uhnites required that an attendant be with Olai the entire time.”

“We thought that when you talk to her, you’d want a little privacy and not have to worry about a time limit,” Shiro added.

“I—“ Pidge licked her lips. “Fine, that makes sense, but you could have let me say _hello_.”

“Olai sort of insinuated the same thing,” Hunk admitted.

“But you can talk to her now,” Keith said. “For as long as you want.”

“I have no idea what time it is over there,” Pidge protested.

“You do, actually.” Hunk was looking way too self-satisfied at this point. “When we were building your device, I included clocks for a bunch of local times, Uhna included. That way you don’t have to be the one always waiting for calls.”

“He’s the best, right?” Lance asked, squeezing Hunk’s arm.  
“Coran helped loads,” Hunk pointed out, but he was definitely blushing.

“Now, this should tide you over,” Allura said. “But I believe in about seven cycles—a week, yes? In a week, we’ll be able to make time to visit Uhna again. I need to follow up with the parliament anyway. It seems they’ll be making a final vote on whether to work with the Ydek then, and I’d like to be present.” She smiled gently. “Is that agreeable?”

“Of course it is. Guys, I—“ Pidge wiped at her eyes again. “Geeze. This is. Thank you.” She looked around at their faces, all watching her with varying levels of excitement and kindness and sheer affection. “Thank you so much.”

“Of course,” Allura said, touching Pidge’s shoulder. “We want you to have this, Pidge.” Pidge nodded, almost afraid to say anything more unless she actually burst into tears.

“All right,” Shiro said, levering to a stand. “Let’s give you your privacy. Guys, help me bring this stuff in.” Pidge remained seated as the others collected food containers and blankets and lanterns, as Allura checked that all four mice were accounted for, as Hunk and Lance whispered something to one another then burst into bright laughter, as Coran started reminiscing to Shiro and Keith about some long-distance romance he once had with a duchess of a small moon colony.

In the end, Pidge was left with a blanket and one of the lanterns. Shiro lingered to make sure she didn’t need anything else, then said that he’d be waiting for her to come in when she was done. He ruffled her hair before he trailed after the others toward the gently glowing ship.

Pidge watched them until they disappeared then turned her attention to the coms device. It was fairly easy to figure out, and within a few minutes, she was poking around the source coding. She was impressed; between Coran and Hunk, they seemed to have gotten the basics in place. Pidge would have to tweak a few things, but it seemed ready to make a call. The Uhnite clock told her it was a little before sunset in Olai’s city. Pidge didn’t call immediately, instead setting the coms device in her lap along with the malka egg. She tapped idly at the malka egg’s warm, smooth shell.

“I’m nervous,” she murmured to it. “I shouldn’t be. We’ve talked dozens of times. I like her so much. But I’m still scared.” Pidge sighed and let her hand slide from the egg. “I still have no idea what I’m doing, you know. No idea how to flirt well. No idea how you’re supposed to ask an alien if she maybe possibly wants to long-distance date you while you’re fighting a war and trying to find your family.” The egg remained still and silent in Pidge’s lap, and she snorted as she flicked the shell lightly. “We’re similar, aren’t we?” she said. “Waiting around for the perfect conditions to finally step out of our warm, safe comfort zones. But I guess that’s the problem. There’s never going to be perfect conditions. Not how life works.” Pidge heaved a sigh and picked up the coms device again. “Well,” she said. “You can keep waiting. You’ve got time. Me, I need to make a call.”

Pidge found the command line to call Olai. The screen flashed a few times before presenting an “outgoing call” icon. And then, finally, the screen blinked again, and a familiar, grinning face filled the screen.

“Pidge!”

And Pidge was grinning back.


End file.
